


Buried

by sunshinemellow



Category: Naruto
Genre: (returned) Anbu Kakashi, Aged-Up Character(s), Anbu Haruno Sakura, Angst, BAMF Haruno Sakura, F/M, Falling In Love, Romance, Slow Burn, Snark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 41,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24618085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinemellow/pseuds/sunshinemellow
Summary: Kakashi finds what he believes to be Sakura's dead body. It motivates him to return to a team dynamic— specifically, her ANBU team.“You have to promise me that in twenty minutes when I’ve stabilized her, you’ll come back here and we’re going to get out of here. Promise me.”He stared at her, green eyes glowing with a storm of emotions, tattoos of power curving along her face, body blazing with healing energy. He nodded silently. He realized in that moment that he would have done anything she asked of him. Anything at all.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi
Comments: 203
Kudos: 372





	1. Beginnings

When he saw the spray of pink hair underneath the boulders, something in him froze. He simply stared for a moment before the wave of urgency washed over him and he knelt by the mess of rocks and debris.

His team had been sent to look after hers—they’d ventured far into the territory of a colony of enemy nin and had ceased to send communication. His team’s job was to figure out if they had been killed or if they needed assistance. Yet from the assignment of his mission to the moment he found his hands scrabbling fruitlessly at the rough rock, he had believed somewhere in the back of his mind that Sakura was fine.

Over the past few years she had only grown stronger. The seal she had developed and the massive excess of chakra and strength at her disposal had made her a formidable opponent. He had grown used to her donning her mask and slipping out of the village each week and her shifts at the hospital getting picked up by other medic-nins. They would give him sidelong glances when he dropped by the hospital and tried to ask as innocently as he could when, if they knew, would Sakura be back?

But as he scrabbled with breaking and bleeding fingers at the mass of pink hair filled with dust, leaves, and debris at the base of the landslide, he began to believe that perhaps she could be dead. That he would find the broken-in remains of her face if he dug any deeper.

The thought hit him and he rocked back on his heels. He lifted his head to the sky and closed his eyes for a moment as the crushing weight of memory swallowed him—the sight of another teammate in another time pinned beneath rocks. He watched in his mind’s eye as the swirling red of Obito’s eye became a sage green, framed by bloody strands of pink hair.

He was taking in a shuddering breath wondering how this could have happened again— _why him, why did it always have to happen to him—_ when slow footsteps approached. His eyes flickered open when he felt a shadow fall over him. He thought that if this was the person who had done this to her, he would feel their beating heart break beneath his fingers.

But green eyes looked down on him. Perplexed, concerned. He stared up into them and fought the urge to reach out and touch the shortened pink hair dangling in feathery tendrils above his hand. He wondered if he had simply suffered loss too many times and if he was experiencing the final breakage of his mind.

“It was a decoy,” she said in a careful voice, looking down at him.

He closed his eyes and was somehow unsurprised at the wetness he felt streak down his face and soak into the fabric of his mask. Relief. Utter relief.

He felt her sit beside him and take one of his hands.

* * *

The shock followed him back to Konoha. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but the scene of crumpled hair underneath stone had dredged up a good deal of trauma that he had previously been able to bury. Now as he looked around himself during his everyday life, he remembered how easily and how quickly people close to him died.

The other night he’d had a visceral dream of rediscovering his father’s prone form curled on the floor. He had woken up soaked with sweat alone in a cold apartment, and even as an adult man he had found himself afraid to leave his room. He was scared of what he would find if he went investigating again.

In the daylight as he sauntered down towards the hospital, he thought again about what he had experienced when he saw what he thought was Sakura’s body pinned under the rocks. The sharp and potent fear had left a bitter taste in his mouth, and during the whole trip back to the village he hadn’t been able to peel his eyes from her back. He was afraid if his attention wavered for even a moment some great catastrophe would reproduce the moment of her death.

He and Sakura had always shared an odd sort of relationship. She was a student who was not really a student—not when he had a boy who was made the vessel of a demon and the sole witness of a massacre to peel back from one another’s throats. There simply wasn’t time for another student. As she grew older and her strength and skill developed, he’d watched with a distant sort of pride. He felt the pride of a teammate rather than a teacher, knowing he wasn’t directly responsible for her strength. But now that the war had come and gone and he had seen her fists covered in the bloody debris and gore of a human body, the days he had spent teaching her tree walking seemed like a distant fantasy. She’d grown more reserved. He supposed it was the quiet anguish of being disregarded by the object of such intense feeling and love.

But then again, what did he know about that.

In any case, Sakura had grown a little more distant. He still stopped by the hospital regularly to check-in—the connection that drew their original team together was too potent to ignore. She’d give him soft smiles and tease him about not allowing her to dissolve the scar tissue building in his arm.

“Soon I’ll let you,” he’d always say, knowing that his version of soon was never.

She would trace the length of his arm with her eyes, and somehow it would never fail to leave a trail of chills as the blood there thrummed to life. He wondered if it was some type of remote healing assessment she could do that she simply hadn’t disclosed to him, but then again, it may just have been the quiet intensity of eyes determined to heal. Her face would always then slide easily into a tolerant but slightly irritated expression.

“I don’t know why you come back here if you won’t let me help you.”

He would shrug and give his regular excuse, but when he left he’d ignore the voice in the back of his mind that tried to convince him to tell Sakura she helped more than she thought she did, simply in a different way.

Now, as he returned to the hospital with the fresh memory of what her imagined death had felt like, he was determined to do more than exchange small talk and make sure she was doing all right. One of the most intense emotions he had felt was regret. He found he couldn’t quite place his finger on the source of his regret—whether or not it was frustration with himself for not having been there to prevent what he thought was her death, or something larger.

He decided he had experienced too much loss to allow for any more regret to rule his life. He would start seeing Sakura more regularly and build the relationship back up to the level of trust and connection they had shared during the war and during their time on the same team. Naruto and Sasuke were off who knows where on some dangerous and _classified_ mission, so Sakura was really the only place he could start. He wondered at how easily he was able to become the one left behind when in his early life he had always been so far, far ahead.

He slid into her office and her head shot up from the paperwork she had been staring at intently. She gave him a warm smile, but he could sense the slight wariness behind it. She had, after all, seen him crying beside what he had thought was her dead body. They hadn’t quite had the chance to unpack that yet.

“Hi, Kakashi.”

He crinkled his eye in response. “What are you reading?”

She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Confidentiality aside, a really nasty case of blood poisoning.”

“Ah.”

She flicked her eyes back to his in amusement. “Don’t worry, I won’t go into more detail. You’re famously squeamish.”

“Famously?”

She smiled. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“Does it?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never understood why you come back here each week. I heard about the time you nearly broke an intern’s arm when she tried to give you an IV.”

“It’s good to keep up with your teammates.” Against his will he felt his eyes flick to her shoulder where he knew her ANBU tattoo was hidden by her medical coat. “You never know what might happen.”

There was a beat of silence where her face was frozen in its easy optimism. Then it crumpled into fatigue, and perhaps just a touch of grief. He knew she had seen where his eyes had gone.

“I’m sorry that happened,” she said. “We didn’t know when the follow-up team would be coming and I thought,” she paused briefly and he could tell she was trying to hide the fact she had dwelled on this for quite some time. “I thought you had stepped down from the ANBU.”

He cracked a smile. “Is that why you went out of your way to avoid telling me you had been promoted to it?”

Her eyes filled with a bit of guilt. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you,” she finally said. “Sasuke and Naruto have been gone nearly two years off doing who knows what, so I just didn’t want to…”

He tried to hide the tinge of betrayal in his voice when he prodded her. “Didn’t want to what?”

“Didn’t want to add to the load.”

He felt a sharp bite of guilt in his chest. “Sakura, you have never been a burden—”

She laughed and gave him a rueful smile. “No need to sugarcoat it, Kakashi.”

“You can’t compare yourself to—”

“But I have to. Who else is there for me to compare myself to?”

He fell silent as she stared at him with a hard and bright look in her eyes, as if daring him to tell her that she wasn’t part of the team that had ascended far beyond the level of what it really meant to even be human. But as he looked the new sharp angles of her face and the deceptively lean bulges of muscle in her forearms and thought about how she shattered the earth and revived people with both feet nearly through the gate of death, he realized she had indeed managed to claw her way to their ranks. Without a bloodline familial jutsu, without a beast trapped inside her. Just Sakura.

“You know, I hadn’t thought you were dead,” he said.

“Then why were you—”

“I mean before. Tsunade called me back for this mission. She was worried about you. I thought,” he faltered when he saw the guilt on her face. “I thought you were just fine. I’ve learned not to bet against you, Sakura. I think that’s why I was so… surprised to find what I found.”

As he considered her in the warm afternoon light creeping through the window next to her—her eyes rimmed with black bags, small scars on her knuckles gleaming white, wry and familiar smile curling at the corners of her lips—he found himself asking, “Would you like to be on the same ANBU team?”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“I just thought we might work well together,” he found himself saying. It was almost as though the words coming out of his mouth were being spoken by another person, but he found that once they had been said they felt right. He’d been growing tired, apathetic. The stops by the hospital to visit her had been punctuated with average missions and lots of time spent alone in the silence of his apartment.

He watched as she recovered from the surprise, an eyebrow raising in suspicion. “This isn’t just so you can ‘protect’ me, is it, Kakashi? Because if it is I’ll break every bone in your body into a powder so fine that the only person who would be able to paste them back together would be me.”

He chuckled. He missed being threatened, being prodded, being pushed out of his comfort zone. “I have no doubt. I’ve just been feeling a little… bored recently. This mission reminded me what it was like to be in the ANBU. I think I could serve again, probably even better now that I’m in a different place.”

Immediately he felt warning bells go off and he berated himself for drifting too close to a past he had never wanted to share with them. But as he looked at the new concerned and knowing glint in her eye, he wondered how much she already knew, and how much of it she had managed to deduce.

“Well,” she said slowly. “I’m not particularly attached to my current team.” The knowledge that neither of them would ever really be able to be attached to other teams without feeling the potent ache of what they had lost hung in the air between them.

“I’ll talk to Tsunade,” she finally said. “Quite frankly I think she will be thrilled. She’s been griping about the lack of new talent recently.”

He smiled. “I’m surprised you didn’t decide to teach.”

She shrugged. “I can always teach later. Besides, I spend plenty of my time teaching here. And I’m not sure I’d be ready to have three kids following me around like I’m their mother duckling.”

He laughed and nearly began to say it wasn’t so long ago that he had been charged with that task with a certain pink-haired duckling. But as he looked at the sharpness of her face and the pale seal sitting at the center of her forehead, he tried to imagine the younger version of Sakura that had once stumbled behind a boy far outside of her reach.

He couldn’t.

He was disoriented by the sudden realization and stared hard at the face in front of him, looking for a trace of the old naïveté. He found that all he saw was Sakura, the woman he’d seen gore other humans with her fists and who he had watched work miracles on the near-dead.

“What is it,” she snapped with the familiar ire, and he jolted out of his musings.

“Nothing.” He gave her a wry smile. “It’s just been… awhile.”

She’d laughed it off but as she walked him out of the hospital, teasing him with a threatened visit to the blood donation center and promising to talk to Tsunade about creating a team with him, Kakashi thought she understood better than she let on.


	2. No

“No.”

Sakura blinked and stared in shock at Tsunade. “What do you mean, no?”

Tsunade’s eyes flared and suddenly Sakura was viscerally reminded of being fifteen and having done or said the wrong thing during a long training session. She had to remind herself that she had grown too old to cower.

“I mean that the last time I checked, I’m still the Hokage, which means I get to say things like _no_.”

Sakura closed her eyes and took in a slow breath. Usually she and Tsunade operated on the same wavelength with an implicit understanding. She couldn’t remember the last time that Tusnade had shot down one of her proposals. “Can I ask why?”

Tsunade sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Sakura, there is too much history there.”

“I think that’s why we would work well together—”

“Sakura, why do you want this?”

Sakura froze, words dying on her lips.

“When you came to me all those years ago, it was because the time you spent on Team 7 had been wasted, especially with your talents.

Sakura closed her eyes. “That’s true, but—”

“So why would you want to return to a dynamic like that?”

“He doesn’t have anything to teach me, we would just be going on the same missions—”

“And do you think it would be easy to watch him get hurt? That you would be able to prioritize your mission and your own well-being above his?”

“I’m not a little kid anymore—”

“Then stop acting like one,” Tsunade snapped.

Sakura reeled back at the vehemence in Tsunade’s voice. There was a beat of silence and then her eyes narrowed. “As you wish, Hokage-sama,” she said in a clipped voice and turned to leave.

“Sakura, wait,” Tsunade called in a tired voice.

She paused, staring at the door. “Yes, Hokage-sama?”

“Cut that out. I’m your teacher. There’s no need to storm off when I’m just trying to do my job.”

Sakura sighed and turned back to face Tsunade. “Shishou,” Sakura acquiesced.

Tsunade’s eyes softened. “Level with me, Sakura. Why do you want to be on the same team as Kakashi? If it’s a good reason I’ll say yes.”

Sakura allowed her eyes to drift to the window. Why did she want to be on the same team as Kakashi?

Her mind was immediately pulled in a thousand different directions—back to when she was younger and his solid form stood in front of her after having deflected a kunai that doubtless would have impaled her head; back to when she was a little less young and she smirked at him as he stood in the wreckage her fist had wrought and stared at her with a new respect; back to when they sat by the fire at the same camp during the war, drained, bloody, and disillusioned as they coped with the reality that their teammates were fighting with and as gods.

And yet she was pulled most strongly to the image of him on his knees with his eyes facing the sky, utterly alone in the rubble that she had designed. In that moment he had looked so tired and so alone that she had felt something in herself break. The curve of his shoulders and the blank grief in his face had said something very clearly—

He had been there before.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, she found Tsunade looking at her intently.

“He was my teammate,” Sakura said simply. “I want to fight with him.”

“And you don’t think he’s going to do something stupid in an ill-informed effort to protect you?”

Sakura shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I think he trusts my skills now. More than he used to at least.” She gave Tsunade a wry smile. “Which is all thanks to you, of course.”

“Damn straight it is.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t feel like the right thing to do. You let Naruto and Sasuke go on a mission together, didn’t you?”

Tsunade’s eyes flashed. “Yes, well the four of you give me nearly more trouble than you’re worth. Remind me again why I would send two of my strongest remaining shinobi out of the village at the same time?”

Sakura smiled. “We must be in a sorry state if you need some medic and a retiree to maintain security.”

Tsunade snorted. She stared off into the distance for a moment and Sakura knew it meant she was deliberating. Finally, Tsunade leaned back and sighed, pulling a new paper out of a teetering stack on her desk.

“Fine. But only because I think you’re too smart for me to just ignore you.” She looked up at Sakura, eyes growing serious. “But, Sakura… I want you to be careful. It is hard to fight with someone you care for deeply, especially with a bond that goes as far back as yours does.”

Sakura nodded.

“This feels a little bit too much like gambling,” Tsunade said quietly. “You’re aware that I know better than anyone how painful it is to lose.”

Sakura felt something in her gut tighten, and for a brief moment as she left the office after Tsunade had given her one last lecture for good measure, she wondered if perhaps she had made the right choice after all.

* * *

Kakashi was reading in the dying afternoon sun on his roof when he heard the soft thud of her feet next to his head. He lowered his book and looked up at her; she was haloed in orange light with her hands on her hips.

“Hello,” he finally said, eyes returning to Icha Icha.

He felt her scowling down at him in silence and waited to see what she would say.

“If we’re going to work together I’m going to need you to pay attention to me.”

He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. “What makes you think I don’t pay attention to you, Sakura?”

“You’ll need to unglue your eyes from your porn from a moment so we can have a conversation.”

He debated doing what he did best and hiding his face further behind his book, but the quiet excitement at the back of his mind that he couldn’t manage to smother convinced him to set the book to the side with a quiet sigh. She was here because she had news—he could sense it. He pulled himself back up into a sitting position.

“It’s not porn it is _literature_.”

She almost looked surprised for a moment at how easy her victory was, but her face quickly became guarded again as she sat beside him on the sunbaked roof. “I have an important question.”

“Yes?”

“Why do you want to be on the same team as me?”

He was taken aback for a moment, but as he examined the determined set of her face he realized she was serious and that she wouldn’t take one of his slithering-out responses as an answer. He mused that her stubbornness had only grown with her strength.

“Because I think you’re powerful,” he finally said. “I miss being challenged. And as misguided as it might be, I do miss simpler times.” She blinked at him and he marveled internally at the slow flicker of her green irises disappearing and reappearing in silent shock. “I think, perhaps, I might have missed the chance to learn something from you a few years ago.”

Her jaw dropped and before the rush of discomfort at how blunt he had been could overwhelm him, he leaned back and forced himself to casually pick up his book.

“Any more questions, Sakura?”

He felt the heavy weight of her eyes on him with the same warmth that her healing chakra had. He wondered again if she was using some sort of hidden jutsu to scan and assess him.

But then again, it might just be her.

She finally leaned back and pressed her back against the roof beside him. He sensed her staring at the sky and he had to strain to focus on the printed words in front of him.

“Tsunade gave me quite a hard time about it. She seemed to think we were being immature.” He snuck a glance at her and saw a corner of her mouth drifting up in a small smile. “She said if we were going to be so selfish, we might as well have our own team.”

He turned to her in surprise. “No one else?”

“No one else. She said if we were determined to co-captain our own sinking ship that we would have to do it alone. She also said it was wasteful to allocate more resources to us when all the members of Team 7 refuse to die like cockroaches.”

He chuckled. “And what do you think?”

She turned to face him and for a moment he was shocked by the sharp color of her green eyes against the contrast of the red roof. A piece of her hair blew in the wind. “I think it will be good,” she said. 

He heard the silent question in her quiet voice and he turned back to stare into the sky, his fingers drumming thoughtfully against his book. “Yes,” he agreed. “I think it will be good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually kind of fun to write-- Tsunade's character felt a little difficult to navigate so please let me know if you have feedback there!
> 
> It's a fun game to try and get at the subtle tension they might not even be aware of. It's fun to explore these odd areas of ~potential~. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and if you feel so inclined feel free to review!


	3. Fixed

The first mission that Tsunade sent them on was straightforward—there was a missing nin wreaking general havoc and their job was to terminate him. It was a story Kakashi had been told several times before. Quite frankly he and Sakura were overqualified for the mission, but he had a sneaking suspicion that Tsunade half expected their team to crash and burn immediately.

During the briefing in her office she had sent him a quick warning look. He interpreted it to mean that Sakura had been _her_ student and that if he did something to screw up and put Sakura in unnecessary danger, she would personally tear him limb from limb, regardless of their plans for him to become the next Hokage. 

Before he met Sakura at the gates, he stared down at the porcelain mask in his hands that he had retrieved from his closet. The harsh red swirls brought him back to an earlier time and reminded him of the quiet and constant undertone of rage and grief that had hovered at the back of his mind for most of his life.

Until he had gotten his new team.

He had never understood why he had been entrusted with the care of three young genin, much less the highly volatile ones likely to explode and unleash chaos on the village (which he supposed had ended up happening regardless). And yet being unceremoniously plucked from the ANBU and put on babysitting duty, as he had thought of it then, had somehow managed to give him back a small piece of the humanity that he had been so determined to crush in his younger years. He supposed that had been the point of him leaving the ANBU.

He sighed as he looked down at the mask, but then reminded himself of the woman waiting at the gate for him. It would be different this time, he reassured himself. He was returning to the ANBU from a different, more stable place and with someone he trusted.

He pressed the cool surface of the mask against his face and knotted the tie behind his head. He stared at the animal in the mirror as he shrugged out of his jounin vest and draped it over a chair.

It was far too late to turn back now, but as his front door clicked quietly shut behind him, he found that the excited thrum of energy in his veins told him he didn’t want to.

He found her waiting in the dark shadows of the trees just beyond the gates. He saw the white flash of her mask in the bushes and felt a small smile playing at the edges of his lips. She wore the face of a tiger—how fitting. As he landed in front of her, he noticed that her hair had been tucked beneath a dark hood.

“What happened to your hair?”

He couldn’t see the expression behind her mask, but he was sure it was an exasperated scowl. “It’s rather indicative of my identity, wouldn’t you agree,” she snapped.

He didn’t respond, merely began their journey in silence. He supposed it made sense that Sakura couldn’t go on sensitive missions with hair that was a literal representation of her name. Now that he thought about it, the hair he had been clawing at from the base of the landslide had been tangled with a dark cloth. Yet without the bright pink hair and the snappy quips as they traveled, he nearly began to feel that he wasn’t traveling with Sakura at all.

He gave himself a sharp reminder that this wasn’t just the _good old days_ and that what they were doing was serious and dangerous. But as he watched her blur through the forest and slightly adjust their course, he couldn’t help but miss her yelling at him in the bright green of a jounin vest. It had always matched her eyes. 

* * *

They broke camp a few hours before the sun rose to get in a little bit of sleep. They would have to travel more slowly and carefully during the day, but they still needed a few hours of rest.

He watched as Sakura sparked a match, the sudden light making her mask flash in the darkness. He was nearly tempted to ask if they could take their masks off, just while they were camping in safe territory, but he supposed he would have to get used to seeing others around him in their own masks again.

“You’re awfully quiet,” she finally said. “Not having any second thoughts, are you?”

She said it in a teasing voice, but he could hear the question that she really wanted answered. “No second thoughts. I’m just remembering what it was like the last time I was in the ANBU.”

He could practically hear her desire to ask him about it, even without her speaking or showing her face. She waited a beat for him to volunteer more information and he debated dropping a small detail or two, but he ultimately decided this evening would be new and raw enough without him unlocking the door that he had firmly closed in his mind. He supposed that he could always tell her more on the next mission, and then experienced the quiet thrill of remembering that there would indeed be another mission and likely many more.

“Would you like a soldier pill?”

He jolted back to the present moment and watched as she slipped one swiftly under her mask.

“The last time you made them weren’t they totally inedible?”

“Hey, I’d like to see you do any better.”

He smiled. “But you see, I have no interest in doing better.”

“Smartass,” she muttered around what he was sure was a very bitter but nutritious mouthful of the supplement. “Hey, that reminds me—you need to let me dissolve the scar tissue in your arm.”

He immediately switched to the defensive. “I’m not letting you do that,” he said flatly. “Besides, you should conserve your chakra for—”

“Oh yes,” she interrupted, her voice heavy with irony. “Of all people, _I_ am the one who needs to store chakra.”

“Just because you have your fancy little dot doesn’t mean you can go around bullying people into healing sessions in the middle of missions—”

“ _Dot?_ Did I just hear you call my seal a _dot_.”

She began to storm over and he was nearly preparing to move before she could crack a few of his bones for good measure, but then she raised her hands in a gesture of peace.

“I’m not coming over here to hurt you, though I personally think a swift kick would do you some good. I’m serious, I don’t know how bad the damage is since you haven’t let me look at it, and I don’t consider myself an irresponsible person who allows her teammates to screw around with their injuries when it might jeopardize my own well-being and the mission.”

She drew in a deep breath after her rant and he scowled at her, but he still found himself wordlessly sticking his arm out. What she had said about the state of his arm putting her at risk had struck a nerve given the events of the last week, as he was sure she knew it would. She drew closer and he pointedly turned his head to the side to demonstrate he wasn’t happy about it.

“Just don’t do anything drastic to it without my permission,” he grumbled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she sniped back.

He felt her warm hands close over his wrist, and then roll his sleeve back to his shoulder. The feeling of her hands rolling back the fabric and exposing the bare skin of his arm to the air sent chills up and down his spine. He typically didn’t allow himself to be touched—it was part of the reason he avoided medics. He felt her finger trace the line of his arm, leaving behind the slow, seeping warmth of chakra.

“Are you cold? Your arm has goosebumps—”

“Yes,” he snapped, feeling flustered by her closeness and the fact that her chakra was traveling up and down his arm and identifying problems with him.

She fell silent and he knew she had probably diagnosed his rudeness as discomfort with the intimacy of having another person touch him. She was probably trying to accommodate him by remaining quiet. For some reason it irked him that she was being such a good doctor who was used to dealing with skittish patients. He couldn’t identify why it bothered him—perhaps it was the level of complexity her life had taken on. There were entire parts of her life that he was completely uninvolved with. Again, he felt a slow murmur of nostalgia at the back of his mind that reminded him of all the years when both of them, and Naruto for that matter, simply existed on the same team. He never used to be one for sentimentality and he was wondering where it was coming from when he felt one last warm flare of her chakra and she stepped back.

“There. I’ve gotten quite a bit of it. When we get back to the village I’ll finish up.”

He blinked and flexed his arm, surprised at how quickly the session had gone. From what he had heard, dissolving the effects of old wounds was a long and painful process.

She seemed to guess what he was thinking as he heard light teasing in her voice. “You’re lucky I was the one who did this. My trauma repair appointments are booked for the next two and a half years.”

He frowned at the word _appointments._ As he flexed his arm and noted how much more smoothly and comfortably the muscles moved under his skin he had to ignore the nagging voice at the back of his mind saying he should have gotten it done sooner.

“Thank you, Sakura.”

He sensed her stiffening slightly at the use of her name. It had just slipped out—even though they were entirely alone they weren’t supposed to refer to one another by name. Not while they were in their ANBU masks.

He was expecting her to remind him of this and deliver one of her searing lectures, but she simply responded quietly, “You’re welcome, Kakashi. Lay off using a chidori for awhile until I make sure you’re fixed.”

He watched in silent surprise as she returned to the opposite side of the fire and slid into her bedroll. She curled on her side with her back facing him and he propped himself against a tree for the first watch.

He found his eyes drawn back to her quiet form and mused that if she took her healing so seriously, next time he wouldn’t put up as much of a fuss about her fixing him up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am an absolute sucker for a cranky Kakashi, lol. I'm definitely starting to spiral back into writing again-- I even made a kakasaku playlist which quite frankly feels like the last nail in the coffin.
> 
> Thank you for reading and for your kind words!


	4. Disgust

When they found the target it was nearly sunset. Red streaks of light filtered through the trees as he and Sakura crouched in the underbrush.

The target wasn’t alone. There were two other men sitting with him at the campfire in the clearing, and it was safe to assume they were also rogue ninja who had abandoned their villages. He shot a look at Sakura through the slits of his mask asking a silent question.

She nodded in response. They had come to take out the target and they didn’t have time to return to the village. Two versus three weren’t odds they hadn’t faced before—they would simply have to deal with it.

Her gaze returned to the three men sitting beside the fire. She moved quietly through the underbrush until she was ten feet opposite of him, ready to engage the two on the left from their blindspot. He watched her raise her hand in the _wait_ signal.

For a moment he was surprised; he was used to giving the signals. The practiced and casual ease with which she held her hand told him she was used to leading. He supposed it made sense. She always had possessed the best tactical and analytic skills among those in her cohort, barring Shikamaru. She must have been the one orchestrating the strategy on her earlier missions. He was so busy staring at the striking and unfamiliar silhouette of her gloved hand raised among the bushes that he nearly missed when it deftly flicked forward into _attack._

He jolted harshly back into his body as she shot out of the trees, her kunai streaking towards one of her targets and blue light suffusing her other fist. He cursed and propelled himself towards his own target a second later, annoyed with himself for becoming distracted.

The man he was facing had a face mottled and ruined with scar tissue, and his mouth seemed to be fixed in a permanent grimace. He stumbled back from their campfire and sent a volley of kunai at Kakashi, who immediately substituted himself with a log.

He was just about to attack from the left when the man’s hands rapidly began to flick through hand seals. For an instant Kakashi’s eyes strained, ready to copy and replicate the jutsu. Then he remembered with vivid displeasure that he no longer possessed his sharingan. He swore under his breath, recognizing the vague outline of some fire justu and preparing his own in response. He reminded himself it was stupid and irresponsible to keep relying on a power he no longer possessed as he channeled fire up his chest to meet the fire attack of the rogue nin.

The flames spewing from their mouths collided, crackling angrily. He poured a little extra chakra into his throat and watched the inferno grow, ultimately consuming the man. There was a horrid shriek and Kakashi used the sound to send some kunai into the golden heat of the fire. He heard the sickening thud of metal embedding in flesh and a body tumbling to the ground.

He immediately cut the flow of chakra from his throat and waited for the embers and smoke to clear. He could sense Sakura’s chakra—powerful and chaotic—swirling at the opposite end of the clearing.

He leapt forward to assist just as she came into view. One of the men was already sprawled on the ground, and just as he opened his mouth to call her name he watched as she knocked a kunai from the fist of her opponent, gripped his shoulder with her left hand, and rammed her first through the center of his chest with a crack that sounded like an explosion.

The man’s scream immediately died with him as Sakura’s hand retracted from his body. She pushed his shoulder and he tumbled away to her feet.

Kakashi just stared. She turned to face him, red and white mask, fist covered in blood, and suddenly he was reliving the moment when someone else had stood before him, impaled on his fist and blood their splattering against his mask. The mental image of Rin tumbling from his crimson hands to his feet washed over him and he closed his eyes.

“Hey.”

Her voice was far too close given the distance she had been standing away from him just a moment ago. He felt a hand grip his arm, still damp and sticky with blood that soaked through the fabric of his shirt with her touch.

“It isn’t safe here,” she said softly, insistently. “We don’t know if there are more of them. Let’s move and we can talk about it when we get out of here.”

He nodded and followed her to the fringe of the trees and melted with her back into the undergrowth, ignoring the press of images at the back of his mind that were determined to be relived.

He kept his eyes fixed on her back and on the memory of green eyes shining out from the slits in the mask.

* * *

They stopped several hours later in a grove that was close to a stream. She leapt down from the branches and he followed suit, ignoring the ache in his legs from the pace they had kept.

Immediately she came to him. “What’s wrong, are you hurt? I didn’t sense any injuries.” He knew the sharp intensity of her voice came from her worry but he still bristled a bit at it.

“No, I’m fine.”

The mask stared at him and he knew behind it she was pursing her lips at his unhelpful response.

“I saw your eyes when you were looking at me,” she finally said. “You were horrified.” He could hear the quiet whisper of insecurity beneath the anger and indignation in her voice. “After all the times you’ve watched Naruto and Sasuke skewer people, _I_ am the one who finally ignites some sense of disgust in you?”

“I wasn’t disgusted—”

She barked out a harsh laugh. “Yes, right. I’m used to having teammates look at me like I’m a monster after I _do my job_. What, are you just surprised I didn’t sit behind you wringing my hands the whole time? Should I have just let you use your chidori? Or was it the fact that I don’t need a chidori that you find so repulsive?”

The rage in her eyes was white hot and searing. He was at a complete loss; he didn’t know how to tell her of course she didn’t disgust him ( _of course she didn’t_ ) and that it was him and his own self-loathing and all the years he had felt stewing in his guilt.

His silence didn’t help and she gave him one last glare bright with hurt and anger before turning on her heel and stalking off through the forest in the direction of the stream. He closed his eyes and let out a quiet stream of breath, wondering how he could feel _so_ fucking awful. The intensity of emotions over the last week had been too much—he wasn’t used to all this feeling.

After taking a brief moment to collect himself he followed her to the stream. He found her kneeling at the bank in her black undershirt, scrubbing at the dried blood that coated her arm. Red swirls of water spiraled downriver from her. The first thing he noticed was that she had removed her mask and that he could see her entire face for the first time in days. His chest tightened.

He kneeled beside her as she scrubbed roughly at her arm, taking breaks every few moments to scrabble furiously at the blood that had dried between her nails. He took his own ANBU mask off and marveled at how good it felt to have the top half of his face open to the air and to wear only one mask.

“You could never disgust me, Sakura,” he finally said.

She cast him a sidelong ferocious look. “Then why were you looking at me like that?”

“You reminded me of something I had done a long time ago. I lost a teammate after she threw herself into the path of my chidori. My hand went through her chest.” Sakura stopped her scrubbing and grew very still. He sighed and continued. “As to why I never had a reaction like that when Sasuke and Naruto used their chidori or rasengan, I’m not sure, Sakura. I think your mask might have remined me of when I used to wear this mask in a darker time. But really, it had nothing to do with you.”

She turned to him slowly and he braced himself for the cloying pity, or for disgust at his admission that he had killed a member of his own team when she fought so bitterly to protect hers. He nearly expected to have to comfort her—it was certainly something he would have had to do for a Sakura of the past.

But she simply looked at him with acceptance and quiet understanding. Seeing the solid empathy and lack of judgement in her eyes felt as though someone had pressed a healing hand against an old wound. He nearly sighed with relief.

“I’m sorry you lost her,” she said simply.

“Me too.”

They sat in a more comfortable silence for awhile. He half-expected her to poke and prod for more information, but he supposed this older version of Sakura had enough tragedies in her past that she was willing to curb her interest out of empathy. As she began to wash her black overshirt he noted with some amusement she was doing an awful job and that her fingers had unconsciously molded dents into the rocks she was using.

“Let me,” he finally said, deftly snatching the shirt from her hands.

She scowled at him and he mused it was nice to see her scowling rather than imagining her face behind her mask. He began to systematically run the rocks up and down the fabric, shaking out dried blood as he did so. He felt her watching him carefully.

“You know, you’ve always been secretly domestic.”

“Excuse me?”

She laughed at the incredulity in his voice. “On missions you always made the best fish. And put out the campfires the most carefully of us all. Now you know how to get dirt out of clothes? You have a secret domestic skillset, Kakashi.”

He cracked a wry smile. He didn’t want to tell her it was because he’d been left alone and parentless at a young age and had learned how to run a home in their absence. He’d shared quite enough of his past today. A nagging voice at the back of his mind noted that he’d been divulging far more about himself than he had ever wanted or intended to. He resolved to be more tight-lipped in the future—after all, what was the point of his mask if he’d go on jabbering behind it?

He finished cleaning the shirt and passed it back to her. “Dry it over the fire. I’m too tired to make food so I’ll have one of your rancid soldier pills.”

The satisfaction in her voice was palpable. “Oh, so now you want the ‘inedible’ food I prepared. How the tables have turned.”

“What I want is to not pass out from hunger or exhaustion on the way home. Sacrifices must be made.”

They returned to their grove and began to set up camp, exchanging light volleys of banter. It was all so comfortable and familiar, yet different at the same time. He waited until the last moment before reluctantly pressing his mask back on, and he thought he saw just a hint of resignation in Sakura’s face before she covered hers with the grimace of a tiger.

He began to wonder if it really would be so bad to move through the world maskless, and as soon as the thought struck him he crushed it, hard, and forced it to the back of his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeeee, a second chapter this weekend!


	5. Messy

She regarded him carefully over the rim of her glass. They were out on a late lunch the day after returning to the village. Sakura had suggested it and he had accepted with a noncommittal shrug that he knew she would be able to interpret as a yes. He supposed she was trying to communicate that being on the same black ops team didn’t mean they weren’t allowed to do _regular_ things together, and he appreciated the effort after the intensity of their last mission. It was good to keep some things normal, whatever normal was to them.

“I’m flattered you didn’t bring some of your porn. You must be in the mood for a real conversation.”

Her eyes flickered mischievously at him and he gave her a light glare. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand the masterpiece that is the Icha Icha oeuvre, though if you simply tried one—”

She flushed a pretty pink and he felt a smirk tug at the corner of his lips. It had gotten harder to fluster Sakura over the years. He couldn’t help but feel proud whenever he managed it.

“You pervert,” she sputtered. “I’d never read—”

He felt his eyes widen. “My, my, Sakura, does my interrogation training deceive me or are you _lying_?”

The look she gave him was venomous. “I would never stoop so low—”

“But you have,” he said with sudden glee. “You absolutely have. Your tell has always been the finger on your left hand tapping, and look at it go.”

Her eyes flashed to her hand and the finger that had been tapping a steady rhythm against the wet glass of her beer. She gave him a volcanic look.

“I’m not going to sit here and be the object of one of your sick fantasies. I don’t know why anyone would even bother to buy—”

“But surely you do, Sakura. Which one was it? Icha Icha Paradise? Icha Icha Vacation? Ah, Icha Icha Kunoichi—”

“It was Icha Icha I’m going to fucking strangle—”

“Sakura!”

She froze and her eyes traveled to the source of the voice. It was a clearly group of medic-nin, all dressed in their white coats. She gave them a large smile as they rushed over.

“You’re back,” a young woman exclaimed. “And in one whole piece, too!”

Sakura laughed and Kakashi watched their interaction with polite interest. They spoke to one another casually enough, but he could sense that beneath it all they were quite relieved to see that she had returned. He wondered how much they knew and how much they guessed about what she did and where she went. He also noticed their slight reverence, and the way that the ones who must have been newer medics stood at the back of their group gazing at her with wide eyes.

She waved them off to their evening shift and the ghost of a smile stilled played at her lips as she turned back to him. “Sorry about that.”

“They’re quite in awe of you.”

She snorted. “Please. There are so few medics to go around that none of us have the time to be awe of anything.”

He shrugged. “It’s lonely being a legend sometimes. Though I have to admit that it did sting that I was chopped liver compared to you.”

Her eyes flashed with mirth. “Kakashi the copy-nin, chopped liver? I’d surely hope not.”

“You know how deeply attached I am to my reputation, Sakura.”

“Right, which is why you make it a point to show up hours late and with your nose buried in porn wherever you go.”

“Again with the onslaught against my taste in literature,” he cried, raising his hands in protest. “And what do they call you, Sakura?”

Her eyes narrowed at him. “What do you mean?”

“I’m called the copy-nin, though the name is rather outdated now. What do you enemies call you, other than obnoxiously puritanical.”

She considered for a moment, her finger swirling absently around the rim of her glass. “Well,” she finally said. “I can’t think of anything in particular, though I am frequently called ‘evil bitch’ during some men’s final moments.”

He coughed on the drink he had snuck from underneath his mask. He snorted to get the acrid sting of inhaled beer out of his nose. “And why,” he asked as his eyes watered, “Would they call you that?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never understood why they would want such a vulgar thing to be their last words. Though I suppose it gives them some sense of satisfaction.”

“And what about you, Sakura? Does it give you a sense of satisfaction?”

Warning bells went off in his head as she looked at him in surprise. He hadn’t meant to say something that sounded so coy and intentional. He was expecting her to call him on it, or demand to know what the hell he meant by it. He wouldn’t know what to tell her given he hadn’t known where the words had come from in the first place.

Finally she gave him a catlike grin. “I suppose I enjoy giving bad men what they deserve.”

He was horrified by the warm thrill that shot down his spine at her words, and then decided he was far too old (or was it her that was far too old) to be having this conversation with her.

He cleared his throat and leaned back. “Well no one could ever argue that you allow things like that to slide, Sakura.”

He noticed a new guarded look in her eyes as she watched him. “No,” she said quietly. “I normally don’t miss things like that.”

They stared at each other for a quiet moment before a loud voice broke the silence.

“Sakuraaa! You came back and you didn’t even tell me!”

A blur of blondeness and fishnets swarmed to their table and Kakashi managed to neatly slide out from his seat behind Ino’s loud catching up. He slipped the payment for his meal on the table and gave a vague nod in Sakura’s direction.

“I’ll see you later,” he called over his shoulder, firmly rejecting his desire to turn and see what kind of look she had on her face as he left.

 _What_ , he asked himself as he sauntered out of the restaurant with an odd thrum in his veins, _the hell was that_?

* * *

“Did the brain beneath your selfish fat forehead somehow forget the promise you made to _tell me_ when you come back from your dangerous—”

Sakura had been staring absently at Kakashi slinking out of the bar, hand raised in a silent goodbye and shoulders in their trademark hunch, but as she heard Ino’s tirade drift towards classified information she swiveled and yanked the other girl down into what had been Kakashi’s seat.

“Shut up, Pig, before you say something you regret,” Sakura hissed.

Ino rolled her eyes but stopped yelling. “Fine, Sakura, but next time I mean it when I say—”

“Fine. Fine. I’ve barely been back twelve hours but _fine_ , Ino.”

Ino’s eyes followed Sakura’s back to the door. “Was that Kakashi?”

Sakura nodded absently and Ino narrowed her eyes. “Care to explain why you’re mooning after—”

Sakura’s attention returned in full force. “How dare you—”

Ino’s eyes widened in surprise. “Hey, I was just teasing you but I appear to have hit a nerve here.”

Ino watched as some of the fury drained out of Sakura’s face, only to be replaced by a cloudy look of confusion. “You didn’t hit a nerve, I just…”

Sakura trailed off and Ino tilted her head in concern. “Okay, fine,” Ino declared, standing up and throwing down payment for Sakura’s beer and food. “It’s been awhile since we’ve had a night in together. I’ll tell Sai I’m spending the night at your place and we can hash this out. After all, it’s not every day that your friend survives a—”

“ _Ino_!”

“A bad pedicure,” Ino yelled loudly, for the benefit of any sharp ears that might have been listening in.

* * *

They tumbled into Sakura’s apartment after a long detour to the dango shop, where Sakura had spent an exceptionally long time moping and picking out flavors. Ino watched her pink-haired friend out of the corner of her eye, trying to get a good look at her without igniting Sakura’s self-righteous temper.

She looked tired, but that was normal for Sakura. Ino had berated her for bookending high-ranking missions with chakra-depleting work at the hospital, but Sakura always shrugged it off. _I have all this chakra stored in my giant forehead, Ino-pig, so why wouldn’t I use it?_ Ino noticed a new vacant and thoughtful air about Sakura. She seemed to be turning something over in her mind and assessing it. Ino decided her job that evening was to figure out whatever _it_ was.

“Alright, Sakura, spill.”

Sakura tensed and sighed, joining Ino at the table. “What do you mean?”

“You’re acting weird.” Ino paused. “Weirder than normal.”

Sakura shrugged defensively, fishing a box of dango out of the bag. “I just got back from a mission. Maybe I’m just traumatized. You don’t know what I had to do.”

Ino snorted. “Sakura, you’re full up to _here_ with trauma.” She tapped Sakura’s seal deliberately and Sakura scowled. “I know that already. What I want to know is why you’re stuffing your face with dessert the way you do when someone of the opposite gender has wronged you.”

Sakura made a face at Ino around her mouthful, but Ino noted triumphantly that she looked too uncomfortable to deny it.

“So, is it Sasuke?”

Sakura choked and shot Ino a vicious look. “Not everything is about Sasuke.”

“Try telling him that.”

Sakura smiled ruefully as she poked at her dessert. “I haven’t heard anything from them in about eight months. That could mean they’re fine and nothing has changed, or they’re dead. Either way, the effect is the same.”

Ino patted her hand in comfort. “I thought you had decided you weren’t waiting for him anymore?”

Sakura shrugged. “I’m not waiting for _him_. I’m waiting for them. For us.” She sighed and shoved the food away from herself. “It’s hard…to lose the people you fought with.”

Ino watched Sakura carefully. “It seems like you still have Kakashi.”

Sakura’s eyes flashed to hers. “I don’t know what you mean by that—”

“Oh come on, I’m no idiot. You acted like I’d shoved a kunai up your ass when I made a stupid throwaway comment.”

“Nice imagery, Pig, and did you think it could be _disgust_ because he was my _sensei_?”

Ino rolled her eyes. “When was the last time you called him sensei?”

Sakura opened her mouth ready to shoot back another rebuttal and then paused. Her head drifted to the side. “I’m not… I’m not sure.”

“It’s because you’re a twenty-fucking-five year old woman with a fancy little dot on your head—”

_“Why do people keep calling it a dot after all the time I spent—”_

“And when was the last time he taught you something anyways,” Ino finished triumphantly.

Sakura blinked, thoughtful for a moment and then sighed angrily. “Look, Ino, I certainly wasn’t the most studious genin and he had plenty on his plate with Sasuke and Naruto—”

Ino scoffed. “Don’t make excuses for him. It was a really shitty thing to do. You could have gotten killed for your lack of instruction.”

Sakura just shrugged. “But then I found Tsunade.”

“Exactly. So let’s stop. At best Kakashi was your unhelpful chaperone, at worst he was a perv who read porn in a tree instead of training you.”

“Hey, that is incredibly unfair—”

“Okay, look, Sakura. Tell me what this is all about and I’ll stop knocking him off your little pedestal.”

Sakura glowered impressively and then caved. She wondered if this is how all of Ino’s top-secret interrogation sessions went. The image of Ino handing dango to a missing nin and demanding to know about his personal life was nearly too much to stomach.

“We’re on the same ANBU team now. He asked to work with me.”

Ino’s eyes became saucers. “You two, on the same team again? After all these years?”

“We just got back from our first mission.” Sakura shot Ino a look. “You know I’m breaking about twenty different laws even telling you about this.”

Ino shrugged. “I’m head of interrogation, my clearance level runs pretty high.”

Sakura huffed. “Well, we had one of the dime-a-dozen missing nin missions. I think Tsunade was expecting us to implode.”

“Well did you?”

Sakura paused. “Maybe just a little,” she said softly.

Ino waited for Sakura to explain.

“Well,” she finally sighed. “He saw me punch through one of the missing nin. He’s seen me do something like that hundreds of times, but this time he just stared at me. I turned around and all I could see through the slits of his mask were these big eyes, like I had just killed his friend or a member of his family. He didn’t even move until I went over to him.”

“What happened next?”

“When we set up camp I confronted him and he told me--” Sakura’s eyes flicked to Ino and suddenly she felt reservations about sharing what Kakashi had told her. It felt too personal. “He told me he saw someone else die like that and that I had reminded him of it,” she said a little too quickly.

Ino knew Sakura had held something back but decided not to press it. “Well, did he apologize at least?”

“He did in his own way. He helped me wash out the blood and he cooked on the way back each night.”

Ino rolled her eyes. “The chivalry is staggering.”

“What?”

Ino sighed. “Sakura, I swear, you’re like a magnet for damaged and powerful men who can’t process emotions, and I absolutely do not mean that as a compliment. It’s a good thing you got _really good_ at punching things because really there is a strong need for you in that area.”

“That’s a rude thing to say—”  
  
“Well, have you been interested in him?”

Sakura’s eyes flashed angrily and Ino thought she might have seen just a tiny bit of desperation rippling beneath the indignation.

“I’m not interested in anyone right now. And he would never—”

“You’re both adults, Sakura. Ten years or so isn’t so large a gap, not when both of you pass your time crushing chests and fighting on the frontlines of wars. And I don’t think either of you will ever manage to find someone else with shared life experience—not unless Sasuke and Naruto rematerialize and decide to rebrand as eligible bachelors.”

Sakura said nothing and drummed her fingers on the countertop.

“Look,” Ino continued. “I can tell you about all the times Tenten and I have ogled him when he happened to walk by our training field, or about the awfully suspicious way he seemed to be watching you before I came over and ruined your little lunch date. I don’t think there would be a lot of surprise or many objections from either the outside world or him if you decided to apply a little pressure.”

Sakura stared blankly. “Pressure?”

Ino groaned. “You’ve been pining for Sasuke so long you don’t even understand blatant innuendo.”

Sakura flushed. “Alright, Ino, I think I’ve talked about this as much as I am willing to entertain for this evening. I think you might have been imagining things, and I don’t want to start any trouble with my new _teammate_. I don’t think he sees me that way, and I certainly don’t see him that way.”

Ino rolled her eyes but decided to lay off. She considered mentioning that she noticed what she had affectionately dubbed Sakura’s “lying finger” on her left hand tapping a furious rhythm against her dango stick. Ino did wonder, however, what Sakura was lying about—whether she saw Kakashi that way, or if she thought he didn’t see her that way.

Ino leaned back in her chair and bet on some type of messy resolution within the next three months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was intended to be lighthearted and fun after the last chapter! I really enjoyed this more casual side of things and I'm always a sucker for Ino and Genma confronting Sakura and Kakashi about their feelings. (hint: genma might make an appearance soon ;) ) 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


	6. Judgement

When Genma showed up at his door the next day with a shit-eating grin, Kakashi had to resist the urge to flee into the early night.

“Kakashi, you’re back!”

Kakashi simply sighed and walked back into his apartment, though the open door he left behind was a silent invitation. “Hello, Genma. I assume from your general glee that you have concocted some type of—”

“Kakashi, are you aware it is a Friday night?”

Kakashi sighed yet again, already knowing where this was going. “My lifestyle doesn’t typically require that I keep track of days of the week. I experience two kinds of days, Genma. Mission days, and not-mission days. On my not-mission days I typically like to remain—”

“God, you sound so old.”

Kakashi whipped around so quickly he thought somewhat ironically that he might have cricked his neck. A jab like that normally wouldn’t bother him, but for some reason the idea of being thought of as old was as irritating as if Genma had spit the senbon from his mouth and poked him with it. He eyed Genma cautiously, whose grin only seemed to stretch wider when he realized he had touched a nerve.

“Look, Kakashi, you’ve evaded my grasp for the last three consecutive Friday nights. I suggest that we go act our ages and get pathetically plastered. We haven’t caught up in awhile, and I noticed last week that you were taken off the jounin mission roster when I was sorting Tsunade’s extra-secret paperwork stack. Call it concern or call it the desire to get drunk— either way, we’re going to go out and drink bad beer until we can’t anymore.”

Genma was smiling good-naturedly, but Kakashi could sense that he wouldn’t be getting out of this. He sighed and snatched up his vest.

“Fine, but before we go out in public I’ll let you know I’m still going on missions. Simply not jounin missions.”

He sensed Genma tense behind him as he snatched his keys off his hook. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t quite want to meet his friend’s eyes, but he felt a new impulse towards privacy that was hard to place.

“I see,” Genma finally said, following Kakashi out the door. “In that case we should order you even more beer—who knows how much longer you’ll have to drink it?”

Kakashi scowled which only made Genma laugh.

* * *

The bar was predictably seedy but livelier than what Kakashi was used to. They pulled up two stools at the bar and Genma took a loud first gulp of his beer with evident relief. Kurenai and Asuma who had been at their own table before Kakashi and Genma arrived pulled up their own stools and joined them.

“You would not believe the week I’ve had,” Genma sighed with evident melodrama.

Kurenai rolled her eyes. “What, wisecracking at Tsunade hasn’t become acceptable yet?”

“Evidently not. She nearly crushed my skull on Tuesday when—”

He broke off as his eyes focused intently on the door. A smile curled around the edges of his lips. “Well, well, look who just showed up.”

Kakashi followed Genma’s gaze to the door, where a very insistent Ino had a tight grip on Sakura’s arm as she ushered her through the crowd of people. Kakashi felt something in his stomach turn and he frowned in annoyance at himself.

“Give it a rest, Genma,” she’s never going to date you,” Kurenai drawled, leaning her back against the bar. “Some women like and expect a little class. And she’s found that—needless to say not with you.”

Kakashi felt himself bristle. Surely they weren’t talking about Sakura? Genma was ten years her senior—he had proctored part of her chuunin exam. Yet as he watched Sakura stroll to the bar with Ino and order her own beer and take a long, deep pull from it, swiping the back of her hand over her mouth, he simply couldn’t conjure the memory.

“So what if she’s dating a little twerp—he’s five different kinds of repressed. I think if I talk to her one more time—”

“That she will hit you hard enough to dislodge all your teeth from your skull?” Asuma finished flatly.

“I’d be careful about calling Sasuke a twerp,” Kakashi said with a brittle edge. “I don’t think he would take kindly to hearing about the insult. He isn’t really known for his sense of humor.”

They all turned and looked at him in surprise. “You think I’m talking about Sakura?” Genma said with incredulity.

Kakashi felt himself tense but kept his face carefully blank. “You meant her friend—”

“Of course I meant her friend! Not that I haven’t shot my shot with Sakura—she’s a bit too coy for my taste. Before I know what she’s doing she’s run me in a circle. Besides, she has a taste for _civilians_.” 

The word wasn’t said without derision and it echoed oddly in Kakashi’s ears. _Taste? Coy? Sakura?_

“What do you mean? Isn’t Sakura waiting for Sasuke?”

They all looked at him as if he had grown a third head, though there was a bit of pity in Kurenai’s gaze.

“Didn’t you hear? A few months ago Sakura was seen with a civilian man—”

“She dropped him quickly enough,” Genma interjected. “I think it was more of a statement than anything else, and personally I think she had built up enough of an appetite by that point—”

“Shut up, Genma,” Kurenai said firmly when she noticed the harsh look in Kakashi’s eyes. “He’s friends with Sakura, you shouldn’t be talking about her like that.”

“Well, I’m just saying that quite a bit of gossip was spun from that encounter. I’m surprised you weren’t aware of it, Kakashi. It was only the story of the decade.”

“I generally try to stay uninvolved with rumors about my former student’s love life,” he gritted.

Kurenai shot Genma a sharp warning look but it didn’t stop him from mumbling into the rim of his beer, “Well that makes you the only man in Konoha then.”

Kakashi’s temper flared. “Aren’t you a little old to be playing these games, Genma?”

Genma’s eyes flashed with surprise above his beer and then he snorted. “Old?” He asked, swiping the back of his hand across his leaking nose. “I am _thirty-four_ Kakashi. I’m not signing retirement papers anytime soon. Besides, they got their own war. To keep treating them like children after it would be cruel.”

Kakashi blinked, unable to come up with further argument. “And what about you,” he finally said, with a forced casual air to Asuma. “You’re fine with Genma and his senbon pursuing a former student of yours?”

Asuma shrugged. “Ino hasn’t let me tell her what to do for years and it’s not really my place anymore. We’re teammates now—no need to create discontent by treating her the way I did years ago.”

Kakashi slouched back into his seat, trying to mull over the swirl of thoughts vying for dominance in his head. Did he still think of Sakura as a student? Obviously not—he never really had to begin with. But what, then, did he think of her as?

“Look, if Kakashi has no further objections, _I’m_ going to go flirt with the two lovely young women before someone else beats me to it.”

Genma stood and swayed for a moment before righting himself and Kakashi sighed. “I’ll come with you and make sure you return with all teeth intact.”

He felt Kurenai and Asuma watching in amusement as he snatched up his beer, took a long chug behind his mask for good measure, and then slammed it back down before following a slightly swaying Genma to the other side of the room. His mind buzzed with the sudden rush of alcohol and his lack of tolerance after a month without drinking. The buzz gave him just enough courage to make eye contact with Sakura when she noticed his approach. She laughed and said something behind her hand to Ino, whose eyes flashed suspiciously between him and Genma.

“Hello,” Kakashi finally said, leaning on the wall a safe foot or so away from Sakura while Genma spoke in lowered and honeyed tones to an immediately hostile Ino.

Sakura gave him a small, knowing smile. “Hello, Kakashi. I didn’t know you liked to come here.” He gave her a dry look which he knew she would understand to mean that he had been dragged here against his will. She chuckled. “And yet even in the middle of a room with people having a good time you’re so determined to remain cool and untouched," she drawled. "I wonder why that is.”

“Probably because no one has tried to touch me yet.”

Sakura’s eyes shot wide open and he immediately released an internal stream of profanity.

“Well,” she finally said. “I suppose a good deal of the women here are frightened by your mask. I wouldn’t know what to think.”

He cocked his head to the side and examined the golden tone of her face in the warm light of the bar, her cheeks slightly flushed with her drink and the curve of a more casual smile playing at the edges of her lips. He liked this version of Sakura—the version he didn’t see on missions or in the hospital.

“I think,” he said, “That’s part of the mask’s point.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, ever the stoic loner. You needn’t be so blatant about it.”

They shared a comfortable silence as she swirled her drink with a flick of her wrist. “You seem comfortable here,” he finally said. “More at ease.”

She stared at her drink and didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I suppose. If I’m being honest, I didn’t come here of my own free will either.”

“I’ve heard you have quite the social life.”

Her eyes flashed to him, suddenly guarded. “And what do you mean by that?”

He shrugged, realizing he was in dangerous territory now. “Nothing.”

Her eyes bored into him and it was his turn to look away, into the crowd of laughing and talking people he didn’t know.

“Kakashi, if you’ve come here to judge me—”

“I haven’t,” he said quickly, his eyes returning to vibrance of hers against his will. “I don’t think I’ve ever really earned the right to, have I?”

She stared at him. “No,” she said after a long pause. “I don’t think you have.”

They both jumped when there was a large bang and they turned to see Genma on his knees, sporting a bright red handprint on his cheek.

“And that,” Ino snapped, “Was the line I told you not to cross, Shiranui!”

Genma gave her a sloppy grin as he staggered back to his feet, but Kakashi noted there was spark of interest and pleasure in Ino’s eyes as she stared him down. Kakashi supposed this is what it was like to be young, stupid, but not-quite in love. The thought had barely crossed his mind before the impulse to look at Sakura hit him, but suddenly a heavy and friendly grip was clasping his shoulder.

Asuma let out rumbling laughter next to his ear as Kurenai began to pick Genma apart with Ino, and suddenly they were all a group again. He felt his sense of agitation fade as they all laughed and traded stories together—missions gone wrong but saved at the last minute, who had beaten who in a recent spar, whether or not Shikamaru had indeed managed to start a relationship with Termari based upon the tone of his recent complaints. It was all very comfortable, and he kept his gaze carefully fixed away from the sharp light of the two green eyes that seemed to be flicking to and from him for the rest of the night.

When he and Genma eventually went staggering home, he could almost convince himself it had been a regular Friday night, and that he’d have nothing to worry about for his mission briefing that Sunday.

...

Almost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I listened to "Genghis Khan" by Miike Snow on repeat the entire time I wrote this. Trying not to lean too hard into jealousy but I enjoy little sprinkles of it. 
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who left kind words last week! I read them all today and they made me so unbelievably happy, especially with everything else going on. Feel free to leave suggestions / requests and I'll see if I can get them mixed in. These last two chapters were meant to be fun little breaks from the action but I'm open to doing more like this!


	7. Yell

When they were summoned back to Tsunade’s office Kakashi was very careful to maintain his blank and casual disinterest, despite the interested and perhaps somewhat amused looks Sakura kept sending him from the corner of her eye. 

As they ascended the stairs together, she’d sniped, “Need some help, _Sensei?_ I’m sure being hungover can’t be easy at your age.”

He’d exhaled slowly, with deep control, and only grunted back in irritated dismissal. He knew she was teasing him—he could practically feel the smug curl of her lips behind his back. All the more reason not to give her the satisfaction.

“Kakashi,” Tsunade snapped. “I’m not speaking for my health. I asked you a question.”

He jolted back to himself. “I must have missed it.”

She snorted. “I asked if missing your sharingan affected the last mission.”

He stiffened and cast a split-second glance at Sakura. Had she seen him hesitate when the missing nin started his jutsu? And if she had, would she have told Tsunade? Sakura was staring straight ahead, face blank and inscrutable. He almost missed when she wore her guilt and her feelings so plainly.

“No,” he lied easily. “It’s been years now.”

Tsunade eyed him. “Well then, I suppose I can’t refuse you another mission on the basis of that.”

He stared back evenly with a benign smile. “I suppose you can’t,” he echoed.

Her face soured and she slapped down two scrolls. “Fine. There is a group of missing nin causing problems on the border. They’re organizing and starting to take _missions_.”

“Missions?” Sakura asked.

Tsunade pursed her lips. “They’re calling them missions, but they’re basically assassins for hire. They’ve been causing problems for Mei, but she hasn’t had the resources to deal with them. We’re going to do her a silent favor and get rid of them.”

“A silent favor,” Sakura repeated, rolling her eyes. 

Tsunade smiled. “Sakura, I know you have a deep respect for my innate moral compass, but you must also be aware that it isn’t a bad thing to have powerful friends who appreciate your assistance on their behalf.”

Sakura smiled and picked up her scroll. “Of course not.”

Kakashi followed suit. He was interested in the dynamic between the two women. The bond of teacher and student was evidently still there, but it had grown into something more comfortable and casual.

“Don’t you dare come back here dead,” Tsunade called after Sakura as she walked out.

“I would never,” Sakura said over her shoulder. “I can’t even imagine how badly I would be punished for dying.”

Kakashi moved to follow Sakura but Tsunade called him back. “Kakashi, hold back a minute.”

Sakura gave him a mischievous look and clicked the door shut behind her, effectively sealing him in.

He sighed and turned to Tsunade. “Yes, Hokage-sama?”

Tsunade snorted. “You and Sakura both revert to great formality when I corner you—it’s rather childish.”

He stood impassively, determined not to give her an opening. Tsunade simply looked at him.

“Why are you doing this,” she finally asked.

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow—”

“This,” Tsunade gestured, “why are you returning to the ANBU when I’ve made it incredibly clear that I expect you to—”

He coughed and she stared daggers at him. “Interrupting me isn’t going to make it go away. Eventually you’ll become Rokudaime. I’m being very patient with you, and for once the conversation I want to have isn’t about _that_.”

He tried not to slouch with visible relief, but something told him he wasn’t out of the clear yet. Tsunade’s eyes glittered. “What I want to know, Kakashi, is why you’ve invited yourself onto a team with _my_ student when you had perfectly challenging missions with a fine team.”

He shrugged as her eyes bored into him. “Maybe I’ve been feeling nostalgic.”

“You never struck me as the sentimental type.”

He shrugged again, finding that he was quickly running out of options. “It’s never too late to start.”

Tsunade snorted. “Please, Kakashi. The jaded act you put on isn’t going to fly. Remember, Naruto calls me grandmother for a reason. I’ve seen enough over the course of my life to know a bluff when I see one. I know when someone is feeling old and tired and when they aren’t.”

There was a long pause as they considered each other. Finally, Kakashi found he couldn’t take it any longer. “What do you what me to say,” he asked bluntly.

“The truth.”

He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “To be honest, I’m not sure. I told Sakura it was because she’s grown powerful and because I’d like a second chance to learn from her. All of that was true, but really, if you want to know what prompted me to ask in the first place, I’m not sure.”

A small smile spread on Tsunade’s face. “Well, then. That’s all I suppose.”

He blinked. He was being set free, after such an unsatisfying answer?

He slouched self-consciously to the door and just as he was turning the handle, Tsunade called out, “Kakashi?”

He paused. “Yes, Hokage-sama?”

“You have quite a bit to learn from Sakura. But if you let her get killed in the process you’ll wish you never asked.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.”

He gave an audible sigh of relief when he was once again descending the stairs. He wondered how Sakura had coped with Tsunade as her teacher.

* * *

“Why didn’t you pick a slug?”

Green eyes sparked with irritation at him from across the campfire.

“Sure,” she snapped. “When I was out shopping for masks that was naturally my first choice, but they didn’t have ‘Slug ANBU’ in stock at the department store.”

“No need to gripe at me, it was a serious question.”

“I wasn’t _griping_.”

There was a long pause. He was used to Sakura getting angry, and he was used to giving her time to cool down. He didn’t mind; it gave him a chance to think. It was somewhat ironic that after all these years, he was the one asking for information about _her_ mask rather than the other way around. He supposed that was refreshing, though it felt somewhat odd.

“Part of it was me not wanting to reveal my identity,” she finally said in a quieter voice. “If Tsunade is the slug princess, I suppose that makes me the slug duchess.”

“I don’t think that’s fair. I think you’ve earned your royal title.”

He thought he could sense the small smile beneath her mask, but he couldn’t be sure.

“That’s very generous of you.”

“You said only part of it was wanting to protect your identity. What was the rest?”

She sighed and he heard a new wry edge in her voice when she spoke. “I suppose I wanted the chance to be something a little different. We’ve all become rather conspicuous over the years. It was nice to… simply be one of the ANBU. One of the collective.”

He drummed his fingers against the wet grass, considering this. He supposed he had grown used to being noticed and spoken about when he was very young—it was something that Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura had grown into. Now they were the ones sought out when there was an unsolvable problem. Dangerous S-rank? Find Team 7. Unhealable person rapidly dying? Find Sakura. It wore on you.

“I can understand wanting to wear a mask,” he finally said.

“Oh, can you?” she said with humor in her voice. “How many masks are you wearing right now?”

“Hundreds.”

He could practically hear her roll her eyes. “I think it’s just the two, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I find a third when I finally manage to rip off the second.”

“And what makes you so certain you’ll be ripping off my mask?”

There was a tense pause, but only for a beat before she quickly filled the silence. “Because we all decided we would get it off you someday, and I think I have the best chance now that you and I are teammates. All I have to do is wait for you to get stabbed in the face—then you’ll have to let me heal it.”

He snorted. “I suppose I’d have bigger problems to be concerned with.”

“There are always bigger problems to be concerned with.”

With that their conversation faded into a comfortable, though slightly somber silence. He doused the fire, carefully grinding down the cherry-red glow of the lingering ashes. As he settled into his bed roll and watched the sharp silhouette of Sakura on the first watch in the tree across the clearing, he thought about how many things were different and how many were the same.

He wondered when Sakura had become so wise.

* * *

Blood spurted underneath his fingers as he drove the kunai deeper into bone and gristle. The missing nin gasped and Kakashi snatched the kunai back out, his fingers left slippery and warm as he pivoted into the next attack.

These missing nin weren’t as strong as the ones they encountered on their last mission, but what they lacked in skill they made up for in numbers. There were around twenty of them in the dilapidated building—Kakashi had taken the east wing and Sakura had taken the west. He hadn’t been thrilled about the idea of splitting up, but she had given him a harsh look and a lecture from behind her mask. _We can’t allow them to box us in. The least intelligent thing we could do is go in glued at the hip. Yell if you get overwhelmed and I’ll come rescue you._

He dodged a spray of senbon that embedded themselves in the rotting wall where he had stood. As he hurled himself at the new assailant, he wondered if Sakura would indeed come if he called for her. If she would be concerned for his safety.

He rebuked himself as he ducked beneath a wide-sweeping kick and tried to clear the haze of his thoughts. What a stupid thing to think about during a fight. He flicked a kunai into the abdomen of the missing nin, and finished him with a follow-up to the throat.

As he stepped back, blood began to ooze from suddenly caving walls and a heavy piece of debris broke from the ceiling and tumbled towards him, but he remained where he was and dispelled the illusion with a muttered _Kai_.

He darted up the stairs where he knew he would find the last straggler. It had been an impressive genjutsu—he might have his work cut out for himself.

Just as he was turning down the hall, a sharp pinch and sudden warmth flooded his ribcage. He looked down in belated disbelief at his left side, where a long kunai was embedded in his torso. _How had that happened,_ he thought numbly, before substituting himself away from a second attack.

Immediately the answer was clear to him—the missing sharingan in his left eye, his left side. It was as though his body’s finely tuned awareness of its surroundings had been slightly dulled in that range. Dulled enough to prevent him from realizing what he had thought was a wall was a doorway into another room that had been masked with a deceptively simple genjustsu. Clever, Kakashi thought. Fool him with the flashy illusion to desensitize him to the simple one.

Feeling angry and embarrassed all at once, he sent the golden flames of a fire jutsu flickering into the room. It was an inelegant and crude solution—he nearly cringed when he heard the outraged shriek of agony. But he was injured and it was a bad sign that he felt nothing in his wound other than a regular painless pulsing

Finished with his portion of the house, he turned to look for Sakura. He took a step on the stairs and suddenly his legs had buckled underneath him. He tumbled down a few steps before he was able to steady himself on the banister and lower his body to the floor. The air swam in shimmering waves in front of him.

Poison? Blood loss? He found he wasn’t sure, as he pressed a somewhat exasperated and lethargic hand against the pulsing wound. Sakura would not be happy about this, he mused. He was just thinking of some way to contact her when he heard light footsteps racing around the corner.

They fell silent at the base of the stairs, and he saw red and white swirls staring up at him. He tried cracking a smile, then remembered she wouldn’t see it.

“Hello,” he managed instead.

He heard her sharp exhale as she flashed next to him in an instant, rolling him off his side and her hands swatting his away from the wound. He stared up at the mask as he felt the warmth of her chakra surging against his skin.

“Sorry about this,” he managed around a thick tongue. “Stupid mistake.”

He was nearly afraid in his half-conscious state of what he would hear in her voice. She responded evenly, “I told you to yell, didn’t I?”

He chuckled, and noticed the surge in her chakra when he did. “Never been good at that.”

He felt his mind slipping into a total lack of consciousness, but belatedly he had the thought that if it really had been poison and if this was the last time he was closing his eyes, then he really ought to get a look into her eyes—to have the last thing he saw be their color.

He had just formed the clumsy thought when he drifted off, unable to try.

* * *

He woke up back in the forest they had been traveling through, his cheek moist against the damp grass and the sound of crickets creaking in the periphery.

He blinked once, twice, and then sent a hand searching along the skin of his torso. He had been stabbed, hadn’t he? He found the relic of a larger wound in a small scab against his rib cage. He could sense that the blade had gone deep from the tingle of freshly healed flesh, but the remaining damage was only an inch or so deep.

He propped himself up on his elbow, looking around the clearing. Sakura was sitting back on the other side of the fire, just as she had been the night before, her masked face watching him. He found himself frustrated by the mask, feeling the sudden desire to know what was underneath it—fear, anxiety, or disgust that he had been brought down so easily—

“It was a pretty nasty poison. Took me half an hour to get it figured out.”

He was surprised by her tight and controlled tone. He had expected screaming.

“Ah. Just my luck.”

Silence.

“You were alright, after the fight?”

He felt a little stupid for asking. She was sitting whole and healthy across from him. She snorted and he nearly felt encouraged by the small spark of anger. Anger was useful; anger would lead to a discussion. He didn’t want the silence—he wasn’t used to the silence from her.

“I was fine. You were not-alright enough for the both of us.”

“Thank you for healing me.”

She shrugged. “That’s my job.”

He felt a flicker of hurt. He was trying, after all. “Well, thank you for doing your _job_.”

He watched her shoulders tense, then release, and he felt that heavy gaze on him for a moment.

“Do you know how scary it was to find you quietly bleeding to death?” He decided that was a rhetorical question and stayed silent while she seethed. “And when I found you just lying there, all you said to me was ‘Hello.’ Like you had seen me on the street, like you were just saying hi—”

“I thought it would be polite to greet you. I already knew it would be a major inconvenience.”

“Inconvenience,” she repeated in a shrill voice. “Yes, Kakashi, you dying would be a _major inconvenience_.”

He sat in the angry silence for a bit, then decided to give her what she wanted. He had fought enough battles for the day, and he found that he was willing to concede this one.

“I’m sorry” he said.

He sensed her softening. This was her flaw—she forgave too easily and too often. This, he thought, was his most powerful memory of Sakura as she had used to be. Unconditional forgiveness. Though now, he reminded himself that in the absence of Sasuke and the presence of rumors about civilians, her forgiveness may not be as boundless as he remembered.

“I suppose I can’t make you feel bad for having been injured,” she mumbled.

They sat in a more comfortable silence for a moment and he shoved away the slow bubbling of guilt and embarrassment.

“We’re doing something about your blindspot, though,” she said. “I didn’t say anything to Tsunade about you trying to use your sharingan last week, but I’m no idiot. A stupid wound in your _left_ side? I wonder if that missing nin had guessed or if he just got lucky.”

Kakashi bristled. “My eye is fine.”

“Bullshit. If your eye was fine you’d be here unscathed. Next week we can train. I’ll tell Tsunade I want more hospital time before our next mission.”

“You know, you can’t just push me around. I don’t have to do whatever you dictate.”

They stared at each other through the slits of their masks. He waited for her to scream, for her to break the earth and a couple more of his bones.

But then all she said was, “Fine. Then we disband this team when we get back.”

He blinked. “I didn’t mean—”

“I don’t care.” He saw her eyes flash behind her mask. “I am so _tired_ of no one listening to what I’m saying. Either we work on your blindspot, or we go back to having weekly lunches in the hospital and pretending that neither of us are bored out of our fucking minds. I’m too chakra-drained to debate this with you. Feel free to deliberate, but by the time we get back to the village you will have to have made a choice.”

He watched in stunned silence as she leapt into a tree, settling her back against the bark and arms folded over her chest. He stared for awhile—unsure of how long—but sure that the silhouette of her among the trees was simultaneously too familiar and too different for him to say goodbye to it over his pride.

“Sakura,” he called.

“Yes?”

“We can work on it when we get back.”

He watched the outline of her body soften, shoulders relaxing and the arms unfolding.

“Okay.”

With that he nodded off to sleep, and he wondered how he had grown so willing to admit to his blindspots, and when Sakura had become better at bargaining than him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was fun to write! I had a different vision of how I had expected it to turn out, but I'm happy with how it ended up. This time I listened to "Can't Pretend" by Tom Odell on repeat while writing this. I'm trying to establish a basis of grudging trust/respect/equality between the two of them before really digging into the romance.
> 
> Thank you so much for your comments! With the general state of the world, they're really been an immense source of relief for me :,). I kind of came back to writing after several years with the mentality that I had probably lost quite a bit of what used to make my older writing "good" so it has been massively encouraging that people are still enjoying what I produce! Thank you again.


	8. Neuroplasticity

He was only twenty minutes late to the training grounds, which he considered a near personal record. Quite frankly he could have been on time, but he worried about what she would have thought. She might have wondered why he had been on time, why she had been made an exception to his usual rule, and he didn’t want her thinking about why—

He broke off the train of thought with irritation. He was beginning to act like he was back in the academy again. Although, even then he hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of whatever this was.

“You’re late.”

He crinkled his eyes at her sheepishly. “Lost on the road of—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

He frowned at her and her eyes glittered with amusement, and perhaps something a little harder.

“Well,” he finally said, “You were the one who _mandated_ that we have this training session, so what do you propose we do?”

“You’re going to let me take a look at your eye first.”

He flinched instinctively. “I’d rather not.”

“Come on, I’m not going to do anything to it. I just want to see if there is any residual damage.”

“Why would there be damage to a _fresh_ and _brand-new_ eye?”

She crossed her arms resolutely. “I promise to make it fast and not do any other snooping around with my chakra, though you could certainly use it.”

He stared at her, considering the proposal. The way she had whipped out the ultimatum on their mission last week had thrown him off-guard. It was something he never could have imagined Sakura wagering—the continued existence of their team. He wondered if she had intended to hurl him into unfamiliar waters in order to increase the amount of leeway he would give her. He narrowed his eyes but she simply regarded him with a plain and guileless face. Finally, he sighed.

“Fine, but as you put it, no snooping.”

“Fine,” she snarked back, stepping closer.

He had to resist the instinct to step back _(or was it step closer)_ as she grew nearer and leaned her face close to his. He took a slow, shallow breath and smelled the lemony disinfectant of the hospital, sweat, and something softer and floral. Something like Sakura.

He stared straight ahead, but in the periphery of his vision he could sense her staring intently. Her fingers pressed against the sensitive skin under his eye, soft and warm with a gentle lacing of chakra.

“Just relax,” she murmured.

He stared resolutely ahead as her fingers traced along the bone of his eye socket. He mused this must be some sort of cosmic punishment, to enjoy and hate oneself so much at the same time. He felt her fingers hesitate against his skin, and then she pulled back.

He wanted to release a sigh of relief, but knowing Sakura, he would end up with a broken ribcage for it.

“You have some light chakra scarring at the back of your eye socket, but nothing that should be preventing your ability to see clearly.”

“I told you so.”

A side of her lips curled up. “Yes, you did tell me so. Can you also tell me when you decided to stop acting like an adult?”

He frowned sharply at her, but a mutinous voice in the back of his head muttered _sometime around when you became an adult._

“You should be grateful I even let you look at all,” he muttered.

Her smile softened. “Yes, I’m sorry, I know it’s not easy for you. But it was important that we rule out any physical damage. It wouldn’t be surprising for you to be wandering around half-blind and refusing to tell anyone about it.”

He ignored that, deciding some battles were easier won than others. “So how did you envision this training?”

She smiled. “I’m going to get in your blindspot, and your job is to get me out of it.”

“Seems simple enough.”

She grinned impishly at him. “We’ll see.” With a flash of green and pink and the crackle of the ground giving away beneath her feet, she leapt into the coverage of the trees and out of his sight. He sighed, lowering himself into a defensive stance.

“We can stop whenever you get tired,” he called out. “I know you had a long day at the hospital—”

He broke off as he felt the hard impact of her sandaled foot driving against his rib cage, breath hissing out of his lungs. He snatched at her leg, prepared to hurl her back into the trees as payment, but she darted out of his range.

He tried to hide his quiet wheezing as he caught his breath again. “You’re faster than you used to be,” he said grudgingly.

She grinned, all pleasure and satisfaction. “I’ve become better friends with Lee this last year.”

“Ah.” He said, trying to ignore the flare of irritation. “Well, if you’re going to be petty, so will I.”

Before she could blink, he had leapt forward drove his foot into her gut, and when she swung back around with a yowl of fury, her fingers shattered a substitution log rather than him.

“Fine,” she hissed with a long exhale. He watched the hardness in her eyes solidfy—there was something challenging and harsh in the green. If he didn’t know any better, he would say she was angry with him _(was she angry with him?)._ He didn’t have the chance to ask, because she was on him again, always darting into the vague uncomfortable part of his left periphery that had felt blurry since he lost his sharingan. It had been an area that his sharingan had implicitly tracked from behind his mask, but in the absence of his extended vision it felt fuzzy and raw.

Kakashi had been having a difficult time communicating with Sakura—the new attraction he was _(was **not** ) _beginning to feel had either made him feel stiff and uncomfortable, or had led to embarrassing slips of the tongue that came off as overly provocative. But _this_ —kunai whistling through the air, arms and legs tangling and leaping back apart, the fury of taking a hit and wanting to give it back— _this_ was a language he spoke, and was realizing that she now spoke as well.

She flitted in and out of his senses, always angling in at his left side regardless of all the ways he tried to force her out of it. If he grew lax in his attention, he would find one of her limbs whistling with lethal force next to him and shattering the earth around him. At a certain point he grew frustrated and turned what was probably only supposed to be a taijustu fight into something larger by summoning a water dragon to sweep her away from him.

She had stumbled back to her feet and glared at him, sopping wet. The sharpened senses of his adrenaline made the water tumbling off her seem like saccharine crystals, her green eyes blazing.

She hadn’t said anything, but when she flew back towards him he could nearly feel the chakra crackling in her skin, and the resulting blast he dodged felt like an earthquake.

From then on, he wondered if her manipulations of the earth around him were some type of earth release jutsu, or just brute strength. He nearly wasn’t able to dodge one of her weaving strikes, and he felt the bones in his shoulder shudder with force as she barely brushed against him.

He summoned fire, water, earth—and she smashed through them all, fists crackling with barely contained chakra and eyes blazing. Finally, as she swept a leg towards his, probably with the intent to cripple he thought hazily, he felt something in his mind click into place. His sense of the world snapped into focus with a vividness that he hadn’t felt since he lost his sharingan. He could feel her leg coming towards him in his left periphery, and rather than having to turn and look in order to dodge the way he had for the entire fight, he was able to neatly duck underneath the strike and come up behind her. When the tip of his kunai pricked against her neck, she went utterly still.

The roaring of blood and adrenaline in his head surged for a moment, and then began to quiet. He realized they were both gasping for air, and suddenly he became painfully aware of the heat of her pressed against him, of the acrid smell of smashed earth and sweetness in her hair. He rocked forward in the dizziness of coming down from the fight and it was as if the extra pressure was all she had needed. Her back melted into his chest and they stood there, her leaning against him and him feeling suddenly and painfully alive all at once.

“See,” he heard her gasp, the word vibrating through her back into his chest. “I knew you just had to get that connection back.”

“What connection,” he croaked.

She swiveled to face him, cheek pressed against his shoulder and her face flushed with triumph. “You felt it come back, didn’t you? We get stuff like this all the time with trauma patients. Once you start forcing the neurons to work again, they rebuild old connections. It’s called neuroplasticity. You kept trying to use your sharingan—that was the old pathway. You needed to rebuild the one from your regular eye.”

He just stared down at her, green eyes brilliant and filled with the light of victory as she told him that he had just used a part of his brain that had lain inactive since one of the greatest tragedies of his life.

She must have seen something in his face as her brow knit and her eyes grew cautious. “Kakashi?”

She stopped leaning on him, stepping away and turning around so she could examine him. He felt the absence of her body like an icy rush.

“Kakashi, are you okay? It’s a lot to process—”

“I’m fine,” he managed through a dry throat, forcing his eyes back into the easy crinkle of a smile. “Just surprised.”

She watched him for a moment, eyes traveling over his face, and he knew he hadn’t convinced her. But he watched as she allowed the seriousness to melt away, her face slipping back into an easy grin.

“Let’s celebrate.”

He nodded numbly, following her as she started up a stream of dialogue that was so obviously designed to draw him back out of his shell.

“You’re paying for a new set of training clothes—these reek. You doused me with river water and then finished up with scorch marks for good measure. And don’t get me started on the _mud._ ”

“I think you were entirely deserving of that given you nearly shattered every bone in my arm.”

“I would have fixed them afterwards!”

He felt a slow smile crack his face as they ambled back to the village together, both of them half-walking and half-limping at the same time.

“I’m sure you would have,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting to the gooood stuff haha. Kakashi is having a slow realization of sorts-- we'll see where it goes! 
> 
> Thank you again for the kind/lovely comments! They make the workday easier!


	9. For Yourself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: some gore, a little graphic violence-- nothing extreme but important to be aware of

The next time he and Sakura were summoned to the Hokage’s office there was a new and tense feeling in the air. The somber look in Tsunade’s eyes confirmed what he had expected. She was done giving them trial runs. This would be a real mission.

Sakura arrived a few minutes late, slightly flustered and in her rumpled medical coat. Kakashi noticed what might have been a few light blood stains flecking the white of her sleeves and internally shuddered. Beyond his aversion to the hospital in general, it was another reminder that Sakura had a full, complicated, and difficult part of her life that he had no understanding of. He resolved to ask her more about her work in the future.

“Sit down, both of you,” Tsunade said, gesturing to the chairs in front of her desk. He and Sakura sat in silence, waiting for their orders.

“Your next assignment will be a rescue mission. One of our kunoichi has gone missing. She was sent on a scouting mission near the land of waves to assess the stronghold of a rapidly rising merchant with unsavory business practices.”

The unspoken question was thick in the air. He watched Sakura flex and clench her hands unconsciously over her knees.

“It’s Tenten,” Tsunade said with a sigh. “I’m sending you both because the two of you combined ought to be able to handle whatever or whoever was strong enough to prevent her from sending further communication. And Sakura will be critical in case of…”

Tsunade trailed off and Sakura finished in a quiet voice, “In case we find Tenten injured.”

“Yes. I would have sent her own team, but I’m worried that they will act rashly if they don’t like what they find. The situation is delicate. The merchant hasn’t done anything wrong yet per se, but he has been assembling a suspiciously sophisticated assortment of defenses and mercenaries. I don’t want this to blow up in our faces.”

Sakura nodded. “We’ll bring her back.”

Tsunade gave her a small, tense smile. “Good. And make sure you take care of yourself out there, too. I don’t have the energy left to train another protégée to carry on my legacy.”

“We’ll be careful,” Kakashi interjected.

Tsunade’s lips pressed into a thin line as she handed them their mission scrolls. “You both should leave now. Sakura, I’ll have Shizune take over at the hospital. And make sure you don’t tell anyone about this. I want Tenten brought back quietly and without other… certain shinobi being sent into an uproar.”

They left Tsunade’s office quickly and descended the stairs in silence. He sent Sakura a sidelong glance and found a dark and stormy look in her green eyes. He had heard that she had grown close with Team Guy in the last few years. She’d gone on quite a few missions with them before she joined the ANBU. He supposed in the absence of one’s own team the natural thing to do was to seek out community in others.

Though it never truly was the same.

“Kakashi.”

He snapped out of his thoughts and found Sakura looking at him in a mixture of concern and irritation.

“I’ll meet you at the gates in an hour. It will take us all of tonight to get there, even if we start now.”

He nodded. “Are you sure you want to travel through the night? It looks like you had surgery today,” he said, glancing at her sleeves. “I may not know much about medical ninjutsu, but I know that surgery is difficult and exhausting.”

Her eyes flared with her temper, but he watched the fire die down to a tired and faraway look. “I’ll be fine. There would have been no point in storing my chakra away all those years if I don’t dig into it from time to time. Besides, it’s Tenten.”

He nodded in silent agreement but resolved to keep an eye on her during the mission. She had done enough looking out for him over the last few weeks and it was his turn to reciprocate. As he had been made witness to more and more of her growing strength, he ironically felt himself growing more protective of her. He reminded himself each time he noticed the creeping feeling that it was absurd, and that she would probably shatter every bone in his body if she noticed, but he supposed that if there was something out there strong enough to give Tenten trouble his concern wasn’t entirely misplaced.

* * *

They traveled throughout the afternoon and night, and only stopped a few hours before sunrise when he had point-blank insisted that they needed the rest given that they didn’t know what they would be facing. Sakura had set a grueling pace. Even behind the barrier of her mask, he could sense the stony focus she had assumed.

When they finished setting up camp and sat at their customary opposite ends of the campfire, he decided it was time to push a little harder.

He cleared his throat gently. “Sakura, are you alright?”

He could sense that her green eyes had flashed to him as her masked face lifted. There was an uncomfortable silence as she seemed to deliberate on how to answer. Finally, she shrugged.

“Not really. I’m not prepared to lose Tenten. Their team… they sort of adopted me after… well, after everyone left.”

“We don’t know that she’s been hurt. She might just have been captured.”

“Tenten would never allow herself to be captured without a good fight,” Sakura said flatly. “I’m not sure what they managed to do, but I doubt she’s in good shape.”

“But remember, they gain nothing from killing her. She is more useful to them alive as a bargaining chip than dead—”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Sakura snapped.

He fell silent. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “You’ve spent more time with their team than I have. I’ll be more considerate.”

Sakura simply stared at him. He felt her eyes boring into his from behind her mask, and again he marveled at the _heaviness_ of her gaze. At the way it felt on his skin and his face, even though he was wearing two masks.

“Why didn’t you try to find another team?”

He blinked at her question, then looked away into the darkness of the trees. Why hadn’t he tried to find another team to ‘adopt’ him, as Sakura had put it? He tried the thought out—him working with another group of people closely, training with them, eating with them, sharing with them. Immediately the idea felt wrong. He had been given two teams in his lifetime. He felt no desire for more. The professional distance he had maintained with his jouunin squad before he had started working with Sakura had been all he could handle.

“I’ve never been good at letting go,” he said towards the darkness of the trees, avoiding her gaze. “Losses haunt me. I think I have experienced as many as I can in this life.”

When he looked back at Sakura, slightly self-conscious, she was leaning forward as if she wanted to reach out across the fire to him. He nearly wished she would.

“I understand,” she said simply. “I felt that way for a long time. It only began to change in the last few years. It’s gotten harder and easier since Naruto and Sasuke left.”

They rarely said their other teammates names to each other in conversation. Naruto and Sasuke’s names usually hung over their heads like an unspoken cloud of history. By naming them, he felt that he and Sakura were moving in a new and more dangerous direction. And yet some part of him savored the quiet thrill of it, and the sense of growing closer to her.

“Sakura,” he began, “please don’t feel obligated to answer, but what made you give up on Sasuke?”

He heard her quiet intake of breath, almost like he had slapped her, and he immediately regretted asking. The desire to know had been weighing on him for a while. Quiet flares of what he had refused to admit were an odd mixture of jealousy and hope had been plaguing him. He wished he could reach into the air and pull the words back into his selfish mouth, and was nearly about to apologize when she answered.

“It’s more of an anecdote than anything,” she said with a soft laugh. “About four months ago Ino had been on an information extraction mission. She used her body transfer jutsu, but someone finally called her bluff. They attacked the person she had possessed to cut their losses, and she suffered the same injuries. When Shikamaru and Choji got her back to the village she was nearly dead.”

Sakura drummed her fingers against the grass and he waited. He realized his must be a hard story for her to tell, but he was overwhelmingly curious about how it would tie back to Sasuke.

“Five minutes after we wheeled Ino into her hospital room, Sai showed up. He was more upset than I had ever seen him—he had more emotion, really, than I had ever seen from him. I worked on Ino for nearly forty-eight hours. I’d take short breaks to eat and Tsunade would take over until I got back. The whole time I worked, Sai just sat there in the corner of her room, silent. Just watching. I don’t think he ever even took breaks, or maybe I just don’t remember whether he did or not.”

“That must have been hard.”

“It was,” Sakura said softly. “But in the evening on the third day, Ino woke up. And the second she opened her eyes, he was right there. He was holding her hand like he thought she would die if he let go.”

There was a thick pause as she shifted uncomfortably, edging closer to the warmth of the fire.

“And, um.” She paused, and he could hear her voice grow strained with the effort of holding back emotion. “The next day when I came in, I found them curled up together on the hospital bed. He’d crawled in with her in the middle of the night and just slept there with her. I gave them _such_ a lecture about how Ino needed the space and shouldn’t have slept on her side. But the whole time I was just thinking…”

She trailed off, unable to finish.

“Thinking what,” he asked softly.

“Thinking that if it were me,” she whispered in a small voice. “That I would have been in that room alone. Very alone. And for a large part of my life I thought I would be okay with that. But after I had seen what it would be like for it to not be that way…”

“You wanted it for yourself.”

She nodded. “Stupid, I know,” she said with a wry, sad little laugh that made something in his chest clench. “To throw a decade of feelings out over just one event. Sometimes I mourn for that time, all the time I spent waiting for him. But then I think about what it would be like if I were still waiting. And somehow, in the long run, I know this is easier.”

He sat in silence, processing this. He had always been slightly furious with Sasuke for how he had treated Sakura. It wasn’t something he had cared about when they were younger—he had attributed it to fleeting young puppy love, something they would both grow out of. But now when he remembered the agonized and false resolve on Sakura’s face as she tried to convince herself to kill Sasuke all those years ago, Kakashi had realized he was witnessing something unforgiveable. That what he had done to her was unforgiveable.

“Sakura?”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember when you asked to go with Sasuke on his travels, and he said no because his sins had nothing to do with you?”

A long, tense pause.

“Yes, I remember.”

“I’ve always disagreed,” Kakashi said quietly. “I’ve always thought a lot of his sins had to do with you. Far too many of them.”

He heard her sniffle, and watched her fingers brush impatiently beneath her mask. “Thank you, Kakashi. That means a lot. God, sometimes I just feel so stupid.” She let out a broken little laugh. “Do you remember what he said after I offered? He said, ‘Maybe next time.’ Can you believe it? Like I was a little kid being told I couldn’t come to the store.”

“I’ve always been surprised with what he was able to get away with. Now if Naruto had said something like that to you—”

She gave a wet chuckle. “You’re right. When Sasuke gets back he’ll have a good decade’s worth of beatings to reckon with. It’s only fair.”

“It’s only fair,” he repeated softly, wondering at the phrase and why it had struck such a sharp chord in him. Somehow, looking at the foreign white and red of Sakura’s mask and yet the entirely familiar posture of her body and the way she held herself, nothing felt fair. Nothing at all.

“You sleep,” he said. “I’ll take the watch; I got a lot of sleep last night.”

She hesitated and then nodded. “Okay, but if you get tired, wake me up.”

He leapt up into a tree and leaned against the trunk, his back protesting against the hardness of the wood. He stared down and watched as she curled herself towards the fire with her hand slightly outstretched toward the warmth. The sight made something that had lain dormant for a long time shudder and thrum to life. He wanted to join her—wanted to hold the outstretched hand in his own, just for a moment.

The thought had barely flitted across his mind before he condemned it and thrust it away, staring resolutely into the darkness of the forest.

Many things, indeed, were not fair. Not fair at all.

* * *

The merchant’s compound was massive. It loomed before them in the dusk at the edge of the forest, and they watched as swarms of mercenaries made their rounds in circulating clockwise and counterclockwise patterns. He heard Sakura swear softly under her breath and he silently agreed. This would be difficult.

“Can you feel her chakra signature?” he asked.

Sakura shrugged. “Not really. Not with that mess of them out there. Can you?”

He shook his head and then sighed. “Well, we have two options—capture one of them for information or sneak inside and see what we find ourselves.”

He could nearly imagine the sound of the gears in Sakura’s head turning rapidly. “We should do both,” she finally said. “The guards out here probably aren’t important enough to know anything about prisoners. We’ll go in, look for someone that seems suspicious and important, and start there.”

He nodded. “Follow my lead until we’re inside. I’m better at sneaking than you are.” He felt her glaring at him and couldn’t stop the small smile that spread on his face. “You know I’m right. Your fighting style isn’t exactly subtle. I don’t want to end up in a situation where you bring this place tumbling to the ground. I’ve done more espionage.”

He heard her grumbling under her breath. “Only because you’re older. I’ve done plenty of espionage in the last year.”

Something in his chest froze. “Older means more experience,” he said lightly.

“Oh, please,” she snorted. “Older should also mean willing to take responsibility for one’s actions and tardiness but I haven’t seen you do either. As far as I’m concerned, we’re equals right now, or at least until we make it back to Konoha in one piece. We are _teammates,_ aren’t we?”

“Yes,” he agreed in what he hoped was a neutral voice. “We are.”

With that he crushed any further distracting feelings and focused on the scene in front of him. Even without his sharingan, the older parts of his intuition that had excelled at picking out patterns had identified the patrol schedule. There was a split second where both sets of guards had their backs turned from a side entrance. He and Sakura would have to move very fast.

He explained to her and she nodded tersely. “On your signal,” she said.

The muscles in his legs tensed as he waited. _Three, two, one… now._

Then he was streaking through the air, the world a blur around him. He could sense Sakura right behind him. They made it to the low archway and he slipped inside, pulling her into the shadows behind him. They stood still for a moment, frozen in the darkness and waiting to see if their entrance had been noticed. When no yelling sounded he nodded at her and flicked his fingers down the hallway. It would be important to keep moving; they didn’t know what the patrol pattern was inside the building.

They wound their way down the corridor, occasionally ducking into side passages at the sound of footsteps. It seemed that the merchant was going for bulk rather than skill. The guards moved carelessly, alerting him and Sakura to their presence long before they became visible.

As they made it deeper into the compound, there were fewer tapestries and other pieces of furniture littering the hallways—it grew more spartan and bare. This was a good sign. He didn’t imagine Tenten was being kept in a guest room.

He looked behind at Sakura, giving her a quick nod. She nodded back, signaling that she understood. The next person they encountered would be their interrogation subject.

Several minutes later they heard low voices on the other side of a heavy wooden door. Kakashi studied the latch. It didn’t seem to be locked. he heard two voices, one for him and Sakura. He held up a hand to count it down. When they hit _one_ , he silently unlatched the door and streaked in, immediately hurling himself at the nearest voice. The body went slack with shock as he snapped its arms behind its back, his hand going to the throat, prepared to choke off the sounds of any protest.

He looked over at Sakura and saw that she held her kunai to the throat of a furious man, his eyes bulging out of his head.

“Make any sound and we’ll kill you,” Kakashi said.

The man’s eyes narrowed and he jerked violently as if trying to reach for a kunai. Sakura tightened her grip and swung around to press him to wall.

“Don’t even try it,” she hissed.

“Where do you keep prisoners?” Kakashi asked quickly. They didn’t know when the next patrol would be sweeping past, or whether these two were expected anywhere.

“Two lefts and a right from here,” the man he was holding whispered.

“Shut up,” snapped Sakura’s captive. She drew a thin line of blood along his throat with the tip of her kunai.

“Do you have a kunoichi,” she asked. “One you captured last week?”

“Yes,” Kakashi’s captive muttered. “Last cell on the right. She’s been drugged. She was too dangerous to be left conscious.”

“They’ll kill us regardless of whether or not we tell them anything,” Sakura’s captive snapped. The sound of footsteps down the hallway echoed and the man stiffened. A dangerous light came into his eyes, and just as he was opening his mouth to cry out, Sakura’s kunai buried itself in the flesh of his throat. He choked, quietly gurgling with incredulity as Sakura lowered him to the floor.

Kakashi stared. He supposed he would never truly grow used to Sakura killing people. Not after all the time he had spent watching her save people. He knew he couldn’t judge her—it was the right move.

They waited with bated breath as the footsteps grew nearer. Would they pass by, or enter the room? Kakashi watched as Sakura coiled in a fighting stance by the doorway. Finally, the steps began to echo on the other side of the door. The guards had walked past them.

The man in his grip seemed to go slack with disappointment. “Will you really kill me,” he whispered.

Kakashi ignored the pang of slight pity he felt at the fear in the man’s words. “I’ll be knocking you out, but if you lied about anything, I’ll come back here and make sure you won’t wake up from it.”

Before the man could say anything else, Kakashi slammed the hilt of a kunai into his temple. He crumpled to the ground, and Kakashi placed a weak genjustsu to make sure he wouldn’t be waking up to cause problems until long after they were gone.

Sakura cracked the door open and they slipped back into the hallway. She hurried ahead and this time he followed. Now that they knew where Tenten was, it would be hard to reign her back.

When they reached the hallway with iron doors that clearly indicated that they housed prisoners, the air took on a new sour and dank scent. There were three men, all standing at different positions down the hallway. They seemed like ninja, maybe chuunin rank based on their ages and stances. Sakura cast him a silent look.

This would be a dilemma. They needed to end this fight swiftly and silently. Sakura leaned in close to him and he was flooded with the scent of coppery blood and the subtle floral smell that was uniquely hers.

“Genjutsu,” she murmured in a near silent whisper. “You do it and I’ll kill them.”

He nodded and began the hand seals, focusing intently on creating the illusion that the hallway was the same as it had always been—nothing had changed in the hallway. All the ninja were alive. There was no movement.

He maintained the rigidity of his focus as Sakura slipped forward in the shadows, flitting from guard to guard with a soft flick of her kunai across their throats, and lowering them to the ground silently. When she killed the last one, he lifted the illusion. She stared back at him from the end of the hallway. He rejoined her outside the door that the man had told them was Tenten’s as she silently twisted the tumbler in door to neutralize the lock. They stared in apprehension. It couldn’t have been this easy.

Sakura pressed the door open and he slipped in after her. When he took in the scene in front of him, he stood frozen. Another guard had been stationed inside, and upon their entrance, he snatched up the slumped form that had been chained to the cot and pressed a kunai to its chest. It was Tenten.

He and Sakura stood rigid and silent as the man flicked his eyes back and forth between them with a manic fear. Kakashi’s mind whirled at a thousand miles a second. Why hadn’t he screamed? Probably because it hadn’t occurred to him yet. But as soon as it did they would be—

“We don’t want to hurt you,” Sakura said in a rich and soothing voice. He glanced at her and immediately understood what she was doing. The man was too full of panic to act rationally. She was trying to distract him before he realized that his best option was to summon the hordes of ninja outside. “We just came for her. We’ll leave immediately. No one needs to be hurt.”

“What did you do to the guards outside,” the man demanded in a harsh voice. “What happened to them?”

“They’re in a genjustsu,” Sakura lied smoothly. “You can go check—”

“Get away,” snapped the man as she gestured to the door. A drop of red began to bloom on the front of Tenten’s uniform where he was holding the kunai. “Stay away from me.”

Sakura froze, stock still. The man’s eyes flicked between her and the door. “Take your masks off,” he finally snapped. “I want to see your faces. I want to know if you’re lying.”

Warning bells sounded in Kakashi's mind. This was a cardinal rule—never reveal your identity on an ANBU mission or you could pay the price later. You’d be put in a bingo book and people would be sent after you in retaliation. He supposed both he and Sakura were already in most bingo books, but he didn’t like the idea of anyone in this large, armed compound knowing their faces.

“Alright, alright,” Sakura said in a soothing voice. He watched, full of internal turmoil as she slowly lifted her hands to her face, untying the mask and lifting it away.

It was always somewhat of a shock to see her face after days of only seeing the mask. The blankness of the white and red porcelain was a poor placeholder for the vivid life underneath. Her face glowed in the darkness of the cell, green eyes wide and comforting, mouth fixed in a reassuring smile that she probably wore with skittish patients. She was beautiful, he thought in the fleeting midst of his panic. Beautiful.

“See,” she murmured. “I’m just a person. Give her to me, and I’ll go. No one will be hurt.”

The man hesitated, seemingly surprised by the face that had been under the mask. The kunai tip drifted back from Tenten’s chest an inch. He opened his mouth, perhaps to agree, when shouting erupted outside of the cell.

Kakashi watched in what felt like slow motion as the man’s eyes flared wide with panic. The kunai tip flashed, and then was driven with a sickening thump into Tenten’s chest.

“ _No_ ,” Sakura screamed. Kakashi watched as Tenten slid from the man’s arms to the floor. The man stared in shock at her prone body, as if surprised by his own actions. Sakura surged forward, her gloved fist flashing out. When it connected with the man’s head, there was a resounding crack. The shocked face quickly disappeared with the flood of gore from the impact, his body flying backwards from the force and hitting the wall with a thick-sounding thud. The new corpse seemed nearly headless in the gloom as it laid in the corner.

When Kakashi looked back at Sakura, her eyes were wide and glassy with shock. Immediately he understood. She hadn’t meant to channel chakra into her fist. It had happened in a moment of panic and rage. It was supposed to be a normal punch—just something to knock him out.

She had forgotten her own strength.

He watched her face crumple as she took in the remains plastered to her skin. Her eyes flashed to his, flooded with a thousand emotions—regret, self-loathing, _anguish_ —and he was just opening his mouth to say something along the lines of _it’s okay, you’re not a monster, you didn’t mean to_ when banging started on the door that had locked behind them.

Immediately he braced himself against the door, and when he turned back to Sakura she was on her knees, turning Tenten over. He watched as her seal glowed brightly in the darkness and long black lines curled outwards from it, enveloping her face with their pattern. She glanced at him, the long tattoos reminding him vividly of the war years ago when she had last activated her seal. 

“She’s barely alive,” Sakura said quickly, green chakra blazing out from her body and enveloping Tenten. “But I can’t—” her voice choked and she looked at him, eyes brimming with the gloss of frustrated tears.

“You stay here,” he said in a voice that he tried to infuse with quiet comfort. “I’ll keep them back. I won’t let them in. They can’t see your face.”

“But all by yourself—”

“Sakura. I’ll be fine.”

Her eyes filled with a concern and _care_ so deep that it left him breathless. The last time someone had looked at him like that— _no,_ he couldn’t’ relive that trauma right now. “You have to come back,” she whispered. “You have to promise me that in twenty minutes when I’ve stabilized her, you’ll come back here and we’re going to get out of here. _Promise me_.”

He stared at her, green eyes glowing with a storm of emotions, tattoos of power curving along her face, body blazing with healing energy. He nodded silently. He realized in that moment that he would have done anything she asked of him. Anything at all.

Before he could let the thought consume him, me murmured a quick, “I promise,” and slipped out into the hallway of flashing metal and violence.

* * *

When he and Sakura finally took a break, they stumbled to the ground of the forest, chests heaving and coughing with exertion. It had taken Kakashi twenty minutes to clear the hallway of the compound, and not without several near brushes with death. He had hurried back to Tenten’s cell when he heard more ninja being summoned. Sakura had given him a weak smile as she lifted Tenten in her arms and slipped her mask back on.

They had barely made it out of a side entrance. He supposed the only reason they were still alive and hadn’t been overwhelmed was the size of the compound. It would have taken far too long for all the guards to congregate and find them. They were pursued for five hours, but the closer they got to Konoha, the riskier it became for the large group of ninja tracking them. Eventually they stopped sensing their pursuers but had continued the harsh pace due to the possibility of a smaller strike team continuing after them.

They only took their break now because if they had continued to run themselves ragged, they’d pass out before reaching the village. He took deep breaths on his back, staring at the tops of the trees. It had been awhile since he had been challenged in this way. But this had been what he wanted, hadn’t it?

He turned to face Sakura and found that even now she was pouring chakra into healing Tenten. Throughout their entire journey he had sensed the the large amount of healing energy she had infused in her arms as she carried Tenten. It was a steady stream of constant and careful effort. He couldn’t understand how she was managing it, but he hadn’t made any comment.

“Sakura,” he finally said. She turned to him and he was greeted again with the mask. He wondered if she still wore the tattoos of her seal underneath it. “How are you holding up? You can’t run out of chakra, we have about six hours left.”

“I won’t.” Her voice was a croak. He wished he could see her face. He wanted to see how she was processing the onslaught of trauma she had undergone in the compound—watching a friend nearly die and then accidentally shattering a skull at close range. He wondered briefly if Sakura went to therapy. It hadn’t worked for him, but he felt the urge to encourage her—

“Kakashi.” He blinked. “Yes?”

“Can you come here?”

He stood and felt every muscle in his body creak with protest. He shuffled over and lowered himself to her side. Now that he was closer, he could really feel the amount of chakra Sakura was expending.

Tenten’s entire body was practically pulsing with Sakura’s chakra. He caught his breath. Sakura had replaced Tenten’s whole chakra system. It was as if when Tenten’s body began to shut down and transition to death, Sakura had said a firm _no_ and inserted herself as the new control mechanism. She was, quite literally, running Tenten’s entire body. Like a human life support.

He looked at her with harsh fear. “Sakura, is this—”

“It isn’t a forbidden jutsu. Chiyo’s jutsu is meant for people who were dead, it doesn’t apply. Tenten was alive. I didn’t trade any of my life to bargain for hers.”

He didn’t miss the silent implication that she would have made the bargain if necessary. He sighed.

“This wasn’t your fault.”

She barked a laugh. “Which part isn’t my fault? The part where I ran around like a maniac killing people in the hallway and leaving the bodies for the guards to find? Or the part where I bargained unsuccessfully for the life of one of my closest friends, only for her to end up getting stabbed? Or is it when I shattered the _fucking brain_ of some poor low-level ninja who probably didn’t even know what he had been getting into—”

“Sakura.”

She stopped and took a long, ragged breath. “It’s all my fault, Kakashi. All of it. And she’s paying for my mistakes.”

“Yesterday Tenten was drugged in some cell with next to no chance of survival or rescue. We just infiltrated a base with far over a hundred enemy ninja and made it out after only killing a relatively small fraction of them. We didn’t cause enough damage that would provoke the merchant to retaliate out of pride, but we left a solid enough warning. Tenten is alive and back in our custody. This is what we call a completed mission.”

He watched a glossy tear slip over the edge of her mask, clinging to her eyelash. He stared helplessly, wanting nothing more than to reach out and catch it, to fold her in his arms and convince her that they were safe, that they had escaped—

“Kakashi.”

“Yes,” he asked, swallowing around his dry mouth.

“Can I heal your leg? I noticed your wound on the back of your thigh.”

“No, you’re using enough chakra right now—”

“Please?”

Something in the tone of her voice convinced him to wordlessly extend his leg. She pressed her hand against the blood-soaked cloth and he felt the blaze of her chakra against the shallow wound. It immediately sealed, the skin knitting back together in an instant.

“Wow,” he murmured.

Her gaze snapped to him in surprise. “What?”

“Sakura, your healing is incredible. It is worthy of at least some praise, especially now.”

She simply stared at him. He was just about to apologize (for what, he wasn’t sure) when she said, “We should keep moving.”

He nodded but fished the pack of soldier pills out of his vest pocket and held them out to her. She started to shake her head but he shook the pack at her insistently. She sighed and fished a pill out, gulping it down before hefting Tenten back into her arms.

As they started their journey back, he wondered when Sakura had last been given praise, and why she was so unaccustomed to it.

* * *

They surged past the gates of Konoha, setting a course for the hospital. He followed Sakura, knowing she had the best idea of where Tenten needed to end up. They slipped through a window, emerging into what must have been the trauma ward.

“Get a gurney,” Sakura yelled, voice echoing authoritatively throughout the wing. They had discarded their masks before entering to avoid identifying themselves as ANBU. When the people in the hospital turned and saw Sakura’s face, he saw recognition, then relief, and finally, determination.

A gurney was wheeled in front of Sakura and she laid Tenten’s body on it. The body that she had carried and re-infused with life for hours. She began rattling off instructions to the other medics as they began to wheel the gurney away. Kakashi followed and watched as Sakura began to sag. He caught her as she tried to round a corner with the gurney and the medical staff stopped, staring in a mixture of confusion and concern.

Sakura leaned against him, the exhaustion seeming to wash over her. She had kept it together until now. Kakashi knew was it was like to keep oneself going with the sole goal of getting another to safety. Once the goal was accomplished, everything seemed to hit at once.

“Go on,” she finally managed, shooing the medical staff on. “I need a minute. Get Tsunade—I’ll join her in a minute.”

“Do you need medical attention yourself—”

“No,” Sakura said, laughing weakly. “Not yet. Go on, I’ll be there in a minute.”

They turned away reluctantly, wheeling Tenten off. Kakashi was suddenly aware of the warmth of Sakura pressed against him, of the relief suddenly flooding him that here they both were, back from their mission and _alive._

She turned and looked up at him, eyes red with exhaustion. “We made it,” she croaked.

He smiled down at her. “We made it,” he repeated.

She closed her eyes for a moment, resting her head on his shoulder. “I don’t know how I’m going to live with this now. It was too much.”

He rested a tentative hand on the back of her head. “You did everything you could,” he said.

“I killed so so many people that didn’t need to die.”

He was just opening his mouth, ready to reassure her that there was nothing to be done, that quite honestly there was nothing in this world like her mercy, but then—

“Sakura!” Tsunade’s voice echoed down the hall as she strode towards them. Sakura straightened, leaning back from him and wobbling to her feet.

“Yes, Tsun—”

“I came here to make sure you weren’t _dead._ How on earth did you manage to keep her alive until you got her back here? You didn’t use—”

“I didn’t,” Sakura affirmed. “It was a lot of chakra and willpower.”

Tsunade cast her eye over Sakura critically, deliberating. Suddenly, to Kakashi’s immense surprise, she reached out and snatched Sakura in a bone crushing hug.

“Good job,” she said gruffly, before letting go a split second later. “Now come with me. I don’t want you using more chakra but you need to tell us how you patched the skin around her heart. What’s still missing?”

Sakura began to explain, stumbling along the hallway in Tsunade’s tight grip. Kakashi watched with an odd feeling in his chest. Sakura glanced over her shoulder, green eyes flashing with a silent thank you. He crinkled his eye, ignoring the new hollow feeling echoing at his core.

He followed along behind them and was just about to veer off and find himself some bandages when he felt a surge of powerful chakra rounding the corner. They all turned and watched as Neji rushed to their group, hair and eyes wild.

“Where is she,” he asked tersely, eyes flashing. “What happened, is she—”

“She’s fine,” Tsunade said, planting a calming hand on his shoulder. “She just got back. We’re starting her surgery now.”

He slumped a bit, the rigid guard he usually maintained flickering away to reveal a very relieved and panicked human. After a moment he straightened, nodding cooly with the mask back in place.

“Can I watch,” he asked in a brittle voice.

Tsunade looked at Sakura, inclining her head in the silent question. Sakura smiled reassuringly, but Kakashi knew enough now to search for it—and he found it—the quiet anguish buried at the back of her gaze as she watched yet another person, even one as stoic and reserved as Neji, ask to be admitted to the hospital room of someone he cared for deeply.

He wasn’t able to stop himself from asking, “I’d also like to join, Sakura. If that’s okay?”

Her eyes flashed to his. Her head tilted to the side slightly, and he could feel her wondering why he was asking. Eventually she smiled, a little less forced than before.

“That would be nice,” she said quietly.

All four of them entered the room together, and as he and Neji pulled up unobtrusive chairs at the back of the room, his eyes briefly connected with Sakura’s once more. There was a silent question there, but he just smiled back, his face blank.

If she wanted to know why he had asked to come into the room with her, he would have to explain later. He wasn’t quite sure himself.

Though he might have had some idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *drops a chapter that is roughly the size of 40% of everything written up until this point*
> 
> Whoops! Not sure where all of this came from, but I ended up doing a lot of writing this weekend! It honestly burnt me out a little bit so I would love to hear what you think. 
> 
> I wanted to have more moments with Sakura crying-- I think it is very frustrating and reductive when people critique her for being a "crybaby" as if crying is something embarrassing or mutually exclusive with profound strength. Maybe I overdid it a bit, but I wanted moments where she was deeply affected by her emotions but very much in control of herself at the same time. 
> 
> Also, Neji is alive here, surprise lol. We love inexplicably alive characters! I kinda tried to keep it as a surprise for the end. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	10. Likeable

Kakashi walked Sakura home after she directed Tenten’s surgery. She had wanted to stay, of course, but Tsunade threatened to snap her in half if she didn’t get out of the hospital for some much-needed rest. Sakura stumbled up the stairs to her apartment, mumbling half deliriously to herself.

“Kicked out of my own operating room… the nerve… that old bat.”

Kakashi chuckled, providing a supporting hand on her back when she stumbled on a step. When they reached her door she swayed and turned to face him, eyes growing more serious.

“Thank you for walking me home. And for making sure that I wasn’t… that I wasn’t operating in that room by myself.”

He smiled, ignoring the uncomfortable turn of his stomach. “Don’t mention it. But, Sakura, I wanted to make sure you knew…. Ah….” He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly as she opened her door to let herself back into her apartment. It would be so hypocritical to talk to her about this given his own massively unhealthy record. “There are resources that I’m sure you already know about—for when you come back from rough missions—”

Her eyes hardened like steel as she turned to face him in her doorway and he broke off. “Trust me, Kakashi, I’m aware.”

“Good.” He said, giving her a searching look. He wasn’t sure where the sudden anger had come from, or why it was directed at him. Maybe he was misreading the situation. Since when did he consider himself so adept at figuring out what people felt to begin with?

“I thought—”

“Well, _I thought_ ,” Sakura interrupted, “that those resources are for ninja who aren’t a danger to the practioners.”

“Danger? Sakura, what do you—”

“Have you forgotten already? I tend to shatter the heads of people who upset me.”

“Sakura,” he let out an incredulous laugh. “What on earth—”

Her eyes flashed once more with a steel that was both fiery and cold. “Thank you for your concern, but I’d consider it best reserved for others.”

With that the door was shut firmly in his face. He stared at it, nonplussed for a moment. The exhaustion pervading his own body was beginning to wear him down. He nearly wondered if he was hallucinating.

“Sakura,” he called, knocking his knuckles against the door. “It wasn’t your fault. We both know it wasn’t your fault. Don’t torture yourself over this.”

He was met with silence.

Eventually he turned away, shambling back down the stairs. It was getting late and she was angry and hurt—god knows he knew what that felt like. If asked what he would want if he were in her position, he’d want time to himself to nurse his wounds. Some part of him still wanted to kick down the door and demand that she admit it wasn’t her fault, but these weren’t the good old days. She was an adult with boundaries now.

Besides, he thought. The world had asked enough of Sakura today.

* * *

He knew something was wrong when she didn’t show up for work.

He had received an angry message from Tsunade delivered by a cowering genin. It demanded to know if Sakura was with him, and if she was, to inform her that she would shortly be subjected to a punishment that would rival the ones she had gotten when she was fifteen given that was how old she was behaving.

An uneasy feeling unfurled in his chest as he drily reassured the quaking genin that all would be fine—murder was still illegal, even for the hokage. His next stop was the Yamanaka flower shop on his way to Sakura’s. He stuck his head through the door and noticed the bright flare of blondeness that could only belong to Ino. He tried to saunter in casually. No one needed to know he was growing increasingly anxious about Sakura’s wellbeing. Particularly not her closest friend.

“Ino,” he said, crinkling his eyes at her.

Immediately her eyes narrowed, flashing over him appraisingly. “What can I help you with, Kakashi? You aren’t the type to buy flowers, though perhaps someone might have caught your eye—”

“Actually,” he said, trying to sidestep the dangerous conversation altogether. “Tsunade asked me to help look for Sakura. You wouldn’t happen to know how she’s doing?”

Ino’s gaze darkened. “I just responded to my own friendly message. Hopefully she’ll cut Sakura some slack—she isn’t doing well.”

“What? Why?” he blurted before he could remind himself that he was speaking to Konoha’s intelligence expert and that she would pick everything he said into tiny pieces.

Ino’s eyes glinted with interest. “And you’re so concerned because…” she trailed off questioningly.

“Because I watched her haul a half-dead and dear friend back to the village yesterday, and I’m concerned about the wellbeing of my teammate,” he responded evenly.

Ino frowned, obviously hoping for something juicier. “Sakura gets like this sometimes,” she sighed. “She does something that couldn’t have been avoided—and feel free to tell me what it was this time because she’s telling _me_ that it is classified—and then she beats herself up about it for the next day or so. She drinks herself stupid, buries all the guilt down in some deep dark void, and then goes to work the next day. Tsunade isn’t as angry as she is concerned, trust me.”

Kakashi blinked. “I never knew that Sakura… did things like that.”

Ino snorted and slammed a vase down hard enough that some water sloshed over the edges. “Well, it was probably to be expected after the millionth time one of you three irreparably fucked up some part of her psyche. Do you know a single shinobi who doesn’t do things like this from time to time, or do you consider her exempt from psychological damage?”

Kakashi felt a flare of guilt. Team Seven always had seemed to be throwing new trauma at Sakura left and right. From Naruto leaving, to Sasuke trying to kill her, to himself… the thought trailed off and he had to wonder—what had he done to Sakura over the years?

“Look, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” Ino said grudgingly. “I’m just a little protective because, well, just because.”

“Thank you,” Kakashi said without thinking. “Thank you for being there for her.”

Ino’s head tilted to the side in curiosity and she looked him up and down one more time. He tried to smile benignly, innocently. Somehow, he knew she wasn’t buying it.

“I’m going to be taking her out tonight to the same bar we went to last time. If you want to be there for her, you could join. There’s a big group going already.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure that’s wise? Taking her out to drink when—”

“No, it’s not wise. But it’s wiser than leaving her to her own devices and letting her get used to drinking alone.

He couldn’t argue with that. He tried to excuse himself neatly, but he wasn’t sure that he liked the knowing glitter in Ino’s eyes following him as he walked away.

* * *

When he showed up later that night, an arm was immediately slung around his neck. “Kakashi,” Genma cried at close range. “You’re here! And I didn’t even drag you!”

Kakashi peeled his friend off his side, clapping his shoulder. “Yes, I am.” The sound of Genma drunkenly lecturing him on his social habits or lack thereof buzzed in the background as he scanned the crowd for Sakura.

He found Ino first, laughing and fending off the advances of another member of their cohort. And next to her was Sakura.

She had a weak, pale smile pasted on her face, but her eyes were hard and bright. He watched as she turned away from Ino’s conversation with disinterest, snatching up the small glass of amber liquid in front of her and gulping it down, then flagging down the bartender for more.

He disentangled himself from Genma, nodding along in agreement to whatever drunken accusation he was making and shouldered through the crowd.

When he made it to Sakura at the bar, she barely spared him a glance, green eyes heavy and vague. “Here to lecture me about coping mechanisms?”

He pulled up a stool and lowered himself into it, keeping his face blank and impassive. “No. Just here to see how you’re doing.”

“Well, since you’re wondering, I feel like shit.”

He blinked. “That’s not good,” he said blankly, and then kicked himself. He had never really been able to muster up the emotional intelligence for these conversations, and even when he _desperately_ wanted to say the right thing, it always came out a little too disinterested, or a little too distant.

He watched the hurt flash in Sakura’s eyes as she snatched up her drink, taking another long and impressive gulp. “Thanks for the sentiment,” she snapped.

“Sakura, I didn’t mean—”

“No, no of course you didn’t. No one ever _means_ to do the bad things that they do. It’s all one big fucking accident! Well, I’m starting to realize well into my adulthood that accidents have consequences.”

“Sakura, wait—”

Suddenly he felt his hand clasp over hers out of instinct, and the world froze. He felt the warmth of her hand, the solid calluses pressed into her palms, and she turned to him slowly. He expected wide eyes, shocked or upset by his presumption.

Instead he found a challenging look. She stared at him head on, green eyes knowing and expectant. _Well?_ She seemed to ask him. His breath caught in his throat. All he could do was stare—her face was golden in the lamplight of the bar. He was brought back to the moment when she had taken her mask off during their mission. Beautiful, he had thought.

Beautiful.

The rush of thought and feeling blindsided him, and he felt his traitorous hand drift back from hers. She glanced down at their unlinked hands, and he saw so plainly for just a moment the disappointment in her face. He remembered Ino’s words from earlier— _it was probably to be expected after the millionth time one of you three irreparably fucked up some part of her psyche._

“I didn’t mean—”

“Forget it,” she said. “Come on, Ino.”

Ino, who had been engaged in a lively conversation immediately cut it off, which made Kakashi suspect she had been listening the whole time.

He watched Sakura slide off her stool and slip into the crowd, drink in hand, without a second look behind her. A large hollowness widened at his core and he scrubbed the back of his hands over his eyes in sudden exhaustion.

What had that moment meant? Was she interested in him, or just angry? Was she daring him to keep going because she had wanted him to, or was she just confused? Or was it him that was confused?

She had been his student, a small voice whispered at the back of his mind. He’d known her since she was young—it would be a scandal, a mess. Then he remembered Genma the last time they had come to this bar and run into Sakura and Ino. He remembered the hungry look of appreciation Genma had given her, and how much mental effort Kakashi had spent preventing himself from doing the same.

He remembered waking up on the forest floor after being poisoned and seeing her there, waiting for him. Had he even been afraid of dying?

No, he thought, as he watched Sakura smile half-heartedly at something Ino said, taking another sip of her drink. He hadn’t been afraid. He’d known in the deepest part of his instinct that she would get him out alive. He’d known it like he knew the sun would rise each day.

So that was that, he realized. After years of general numbness and occasional meaningless sex, he’d finally developed feelings for someone. He wondered if it was supposed to feel so painful.

“Kakashi.” He turned and found Genma looking at him with an uncharacteristically somber face.

“What is it, Genma,” he managed, trying to infuse his words with the usual nonchalance. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look upset with a drink in your hand.”

“I saw it.”

Kakashi deflated, hand propping up his head. Would this be his new reality? Navigating the concern and incredulity of his friends, fending off pity while he sat by himself at the bar? “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally said.

Genma slid into what had been Sakura’s seat, patting Kakashi’s back gingerly. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think this was good for you.”

Kakashi barked a laugh. “Good for me? I don’t think I’ve felt this awful in years.”

Genma smiled. “It’s always hard at the beginning. Beginnings are always hard, especially for people like us. We carry a lot of ‘before’ to each new beginning.”

Kakashi considered Genma. It had been awhile since they’d had a serious conversation like this. “And what makes you think this is a beginning, Genma? That this isn’t something that will go away when I inevitably fuck it up?”

Genma shrugged. “Because I think both of you deserve it. And maybe you’ve reached a point in your lives where you’re willing to fight for it.”

Kakashi mulled this over. Was he willing to fight for it? What exactly would ‘it’ look like? He turned to look at Sakura and watched her down another fresh drink and felt an ache rock through him at the sight of her coping so poorly and blaming herself for something that wasn’t her fault. She always blamed herself.

“Enough moping,” Genma said in a new, bright tone. “Nothing important is figured out in one night. We’ve all been where she is right now, and what she needs is a friend, which she has,” he said nodding at Ino. “Your job is to cope. When I pull Asuma and Kurenai out of their freaky little corner, we’re going to have a good time, yes?”

“Sure, Genma.”

The rest of the night was happier. Kurenai and Asuma had stories about their most recent mission and they shared embarrassing details about one another the way comfortable couples do—Asuma snored so loudly it nearly attracted enemy ninja and Kurenai had punched her handsy seduction target on reflex before she got the information she needed. Everyone laughed and consumed large amounts of the bar’s sour beer. At some point Guy joined for a bit and challenged him to a drinking contest, which he politely declined.

Eventually it was just him and Genma left, and Genma decided to try his hand with the pretty women who had been eyeing him from their booth. Kakashi waited good naturedly at the bar, swirling the dregs of his beer in his glass. He was about to make his way home, confident that Genma would be leaving soon and with his own company, when he heard a masculine voice to his left.

“So, what do you two ladies do?”

He turned his head slightly, thinking that his luck couldn’t possibly be so bad, only to find Sakura and Ino leaning on the bar about five feet away coyly eyeing the two men leaning across from them.

“We’re shinobi,” Ino said, giving Sakura an encouraging nudge. “So is my boyfriend,” she elaborated with a deliberate edge. Kakashi watched with gritted teeth as the two men shifted their joint attention to Sakura. He remembered what Genma had said the last time they were in this bar.

 _Before I know what she’s doing she’s run me in a circle. Besides, she has a taste for_ _civilians_.

“Wow, a kunoichi,” one of the men said. Kakashi wanted to hate him, but there was nothing but innocent admiration in his voice. “That must be difficult.”

“Yes,” Sakura said. “It is.”

“Have you,” the man seemed to hesitate a moment, but still asked his question, perhaps against his better judgement. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

The question made Kakashi turn and gaze at Sakura. This stupid man had no idea—no understanding of what he was asking her, especially tonight. She was holding her alcohol remarkably well and barely showed a hint of being drunk. He supposed it was just more of Tsunade’s influence. Yet he had watched her down glass after glass out of the corner of his eye, each one feeling like a twist of guilt in his own gut.

Sakura’s face remained frozen in its placid smile for a moment. He watched something travel underneath the surface in her green eyes—

And then she was looking at him.

She stared straight at him and he felt a thrill of electricity travel through his body. For a moment, they were insulated from the outside world and reliving the same memories. Sakura striking down enemy ninja by his side during the war, Sakura slitting the throats of the guards last night, Sakura staring at him, agonized and shocked with the remains of a human head plastered on her hands—

She looked away and his breath hitched quietly in his throat.

She smiled back at the man, a sweet mask back in place. “Once or twice,” she said.

It was simply too much.

He snatched the relatively full glass of nameless clear alcohol that Genma had left behind, downing it in a split second behind his mask and slamming the newly empty glass with a rattle on the wood of the bar.

He stood from his seat, nearly ( _nearly)_ staggering from the sudden rush to his head, and strode out, ignoring the question he heard Genma call out after him.

The cold night air washed over him and he sucked in a deep breath, his head spinning. He hadn’t been this angry in so long, and _why_ he asked himself in his buzzed haze, _was he so angry?_

He began the brisk walk back to his apartment and had made it nearly ten feet or so when he heard the wooden door of the bar slamming shut so hard that it rattled the shingles on the roof.

“How dare you,” he heard her yell, light footsteps approaching rapidly. “How dare you act like you can just storm out when I talk to someone—”

He spun on his heel, heat flooding his body. “You were _lying_ to him, Sakura.”

“So what?” Her eyes flashed fiercely, glittering with rage. “Should I go around telling every person who asks me that I, quite literally, smash heads into little tiny bloody pieces whenever someone pisses me off?”

“You weren’t just pissed off, Sakura,” he yelled. “You watched someone stab your friend. Tell me, how many times have you seen Naruto or Sasuke do something violent and terrifying because someone they loved was in danger? How many times? And how many times did you think they were disgusting for it, or that they deserved to be punished?”

“It is _different_ for them, Kakashi! They don’t heal people—”

“Then you, of all people, have more of a right than they do to go on whatever fucking rampage you want. Do you even realize how much _good_ you put into this world? How much you _give_ away? Why can’t you cut yourself some slack—"

“Because I want better from myself! Because no one else gives me the credibility that would even allow me to begin to cut myself slack!”

He stared at her for a moment, breath coming in sharp pants. “What, then?” he rasped, his throat sore from yelling. “The solution is to go around getting drunk, pretending to be like civilians in bars because you hate yourself so much? You’ve done things like this for so many years for _him_ , Sakura—you don’t need to keep making yourself _likeable—_ ”

“Likeable?” She scoffed, but her breath caught sharply in her throat. He saw her eyes sparkle with angry tears, and it was like someone had gutted him when he realized he was the reason for them. “Kakashi,” she said in a low and harsh voice. “If I were trying to make myself _likeable_ , you would think that someone would like me by now.”

“I like you,” he said without hesitation.

She stared at him and his mouth went dry.

“I do,” he managed in a hoarse voice. “I like you even when you’re violent, even when you’re killing people. I like you when you’re angry. Sometimes I don’t think there is anything in this world as beautiful as you being furious about something. And if it wasn’t so terrifying and _new_ for me then it would be easier for me to talk about.”

She took a slow step forward and he closed his eyes, suddenly unable to handle the implications of what he had just revealed. Would she be disgusted? Was she coming slap him? All he could do was remain rooted, determined not to pull away this time. He would take it—whatever came.

He felt a hand press against the curve of his face and the warmth of her touch on the skin near his eyes sent a heat blazing through him. He leaned into her hand, unable to help himself. It was a hand he had watched both tear through flesh and practically bring people back to life, and his whole body thrummed in response to its light press against his face. His life had always been an odd mix of tragedy and miracle, he thought. And she was both.

He felt the air shift near his face, and a light fanning of breath against the mask covering his lips. His head swam and his eyes flashed open to find _green_ , bright and vivid green glowing back mere inches from him.

And then it all shattered.

He distantly heard the door of the bar crack open, and suddenly the air in front of him was empty and his whole body ached with the absence.

“Sakura, you are the absolute _worst._ You slammed the door so fucking hard that it got stuck. I literally can’t take you anywhere, because now you’ve found a new and exciting way to _break buildings_ —”

Ino broke off as she took in the sight in front of her. Kakashi and Sakura standing a little too far apart to have been having a normal conversation, and Kakashi was standing so straight and still that Ino thought he would probably fall over and crack if someone nudged him. Sakura’s face was flushed—and was that redness around her eyes from crying? Ino tensed, prepared to beat the shit out of whoever had caused it when she noticed the imploring look Sakura gave Kakashi, full of silent history and context. Ino blinked. It had been a long time since she had seen Sakura give anyone _that_ look.

“Thank you, Kakashi,” Sakura said quietly. Then she turned to Ino, face filled with manic and absolutely forced glee. “Let’s go, Ino-pig.”

Sakura strode forward and grabbed her arm, steering her towards home. “Sakura, what’s going on,” Ino asked in a hushed whisper, though she thought she had some idea already.

Sakura swiped impatiently at her eyes, shaking her hand as if it were full of electricity. “Later, Ino,” she said in a sharp voice, but with perhaps, just maybe, a touch of hope.

Ino glanced back at Kakashi and found him standing exactly where he had been before, face titled up towards the sky. Ino thought she had never seen him look so vulnerable.

Or was it open?

Ino shook her head, her mind still swimming with the last two drinks she had taken before she busted Sakura’s chakra-dented door back open. She’d find out later. A small smile spread over her face. This, she thought, is what progress looked like. Messy progress, but progress nonetheless. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lollll what is this??
> 
> writing romance is v stressful but I am trying out here. this has been a good outlet for me, esp since my own current relationship isn't exactly ~thriving~ in our new quarantine situation. I suppose we make do where we can. 
> 
> thank you for all the lovely comments you left on the last update-- I woke up to all of them and had a giant smile as I read through them before work! I'm going to respond to them all v soon, but it is late-ish here so I might have to wait until tomorrow.
> 
> thank you again and stay safe!


	11. Without Me?

“So you’re telling me… he said that he liked you?”

Sakura glared at Ino and hurled one of the couch pillows at her. “Stop making it sound so juvenile! It was a big deal!”

Ino’s blue eyes flashed with vindictive excitement. “So you admit that it was a big deal?”

“That’s not what I—”

“That’s literally what you _just_ said—”

_“Shut up!”_

Ino winced, pressing a palm against her head. “Not that loud, Sakura. Not all of us have chakra systems that streamline the hangover process.” She took a tentative sip of a smoothie that practically glowed with a green radioactive brilliance. “So explain again, if I’m missing something, why _isn’t_ this a big deal?”

Sakura frowned and considered what had happened the previous night.

_Black eyes gazed down on her, filled with an odd mixture of pained restraint and unmistakable desire that made her head swim. He blinked, features transitioning into wry tenderness as she watched him in silence, his lips quirking up at the edges under his mask and his eyes softening in a form of defeat._

_“…if it wasn’t so terrifying and new for me then it would be easier for me to talk about.”_

_With that his eyes had closed as if he were waiting for her judgement, his lashes resting in dark half-moons against his cheeks. She studied his face in the watery evening light, taking in the elegant sloping planes of his covered cheekbones, the soft crinkles at the edges of his smiling eyes, the harsh line that ran through his left eye. She zeroed in on his surprisingly long eyelashes, her hand reaching out almost on its own accord to trace the skin there. The warmth of his face against her hand was searing like fire, and the sigh he let out at her touch sent a current of electricity rushing through her body._

_She was leaning forward, watching him in fascination as she grew nearer. He was a type of handsome that she could only describe as casually elegant, and the closeness was intoxicating. She let out a soft breath mere inches from him, wondering if he could sense her. His eyes flashed open, dark and shocked, and suddenly ravenous as he realized she was **right there**_ **—**

“Hey, Forehead. When you’re done fantasizing, I would love to have my question answered.”

Sakura gasped as she jolted out of the memory, just as she had been jolted out of the moment by Ino the night before. “Shit,” she whispered, snatching the pillow back from the ground where Ino had deflected it, burying her face in the cloth. “Shit,” she shouted into the pillow, rolling onto her back.

“I see,” Ino said, and Sakura could practically hear the smirk in her voice. “So it _is_ a big deal.”

“He was my sensei, Ino.”

“Right,” Ino scoffed. “Like twelve years ago. A second Sakura Haruno could have been born and made chuunin in the time that it has been since he was—”

“Stop, stop, you’re making it weirder—”

“No one is making this weird, Sakura. If anything, you’re acting immature. Frankly I think you’re so afraid of falling in love with another member of Team Seven and ending up burned that you’re going through all the excuses that you can.”

Sakura blinked and then glared. “I’m not afraid of—”

“Have there been any close calls on your _top-secret missions_ where Kakashi has been injured? Was the concern that you felt for him platonic?”

Sakura was brought forcefully back to the moment where she found him on the staircase during their second mission.

_His lanky frame was stretched out languidly in an uncomfortable position on the stairs, and she watched as blood pulsed out of him from between his fingers. She froze. His face was hidden by his porcelain mask, but his head tilted to the side at her arrival. His dry voice called down to her, “Hello.”_

_Then his head lolled back and she was up the stairs in a flash, batting his hand aside from his wound as the rising clench of panic seized her._

_“I told you to yell, didn’t I,” she hissed back to his stumbling joke of an apology._

_She glanced at the slits in his mask and saw the cloudiness in his dark eyes as they searched for hers. For a moment she saw a hint of desperation in them when they couldn’t focus and she leaned forward, her hand cupping the cold ceramic of his mask as if to say **I’m here, I’m here, I’ll make sure you wake up again**_ — _but then his eyes had closed and she was left in silence._

_Hefting him against her chest and streaming chakra through her arms, she realized she hadn’t felt this protective since— **no,** she didn’t think of such things anymore. _

_But as she ran through the trees, holding him tightly against her, she thought that she would grind the world down to crumbling dust if he didn’t wake up again. The thought made her chakra blaze, and he must have felt it because he stirred in her arms._

 _“Sakura,” he muttered._

_Her heart clenched and she told herself (forced herself to believe) that he had just been responding to the flare of her chakra signature—he had just been identifying the surge in chakra as hers, as a non-threat._

_But as she treated him once they reached a safe position, searing the poison out of his body, she heard her name mumbled once more, and she marveled at the responding ache she felt in her heart. An ache she hadn’t felt in years._

_The poison she extracted was a livid purple. She cursed quietly at it as she bottled it for further analysis. When she turned back to him, she wasn’t able to stop herself from briefly lifting his ANBU mask._

_He was (of course) wearing his second cloth mask underneath (she smiled with exasperated and tired tenderness). She watched her hand reach out and stroke his temple, his pale and sweaty face regaining color as she trailed a line of chakra along his jaw and down his nose._

_He was handsome, she realized. The soft blankness of his unconscious face allowed her to study him more closely than she ever had before. Just as she was beginning to berate herself for thinking such things, he shifted, leaning into the hand that was gently streaming chakra into the side of his head._

_“Sakura,” he mumbled distantly._

_Three times, she thought. Did that mean—_

_She swore at herself, replacing his mask and moving back to her end of the campfire. If he didn’t start taking his blindspot seriously, she would stop these missions._

_Regardless of the way her name sounded from his sleepy lips._

“Shit,” Sakura muttered softly under her breath.

Ino raised her smoothie, bits of green sloshing over the edges. “I’ll toast to that, Forehead.”

* * *

The genin that banged on her door seemed too young to be allowed to be a ninja. Sakura stared down at him, suddenly feeling ancient and sad all at once, then discreetly shut the door behind herself when Ino’s cursing at the loud noises rose an octave.

“His eyes flicked nervously to the door at her back and she smiled in reassurance. “She won’t come out. She’s too hungover—”

“The Hokage requests your presence immediately. It is an emergency,” the boy blurted, taking in a deep breath after he finished, then fixing his gaze on his feet.

Sakura felt her body tense, her mind shifting to an assessment of what the problem could be—new intel? ANBU units returned bloody and battered? A new mission with Kakashi?

A thrill shot through her at the thought, a low voice replaying in her mind.

_I like you._

She began to think about what those words did to her stomach when she jolted, remembering that someone was probably dying while she thought about the way Kakashi’s voice had sent a warm rush down the back of her spine.

“Got it,” she said to the anxious genin, letting herself back into her apartment. She heard Ino calling from the living room but she dashed to her room, snatching up a crumpled but clean set of ANBU clothes and the cold porcelain mask she had yet to clean the blood from. She gave it a rueful look, then hid it behind her back as she darted out to where Ino was sprawled on her couch.

“Gotta run, Pig. Duty calls.”

Ino propped herself up and turned around to face Sakura, bleary blue eyes flashing up and down her dark uniform and growing somber.

“Was that banging on the door another ANBU? Is something wrong—”

“Not sure,” Sakura said, snatching some soldier pills from her cabinet and gulping down a last drink of water. She turned back to Ino and tried to ignore the stinging pang of guilt when she saw the concern in her eyes. “Don’t worry, Ino,” she said with forced cheer. “I’m like a cockroach, remember? Can’t die. And now you’ll get some quiet hangover time.”

Ino snorted and rolled her shoulders with a fake nonchalance. “I’ll try to revive the plants you keep killing when you’re gone. And if something juicy happens with Kakashi you’ll owe me blood if you refuse to explain when you get back.”

Sakura flushed, her thumb scraping at the dried blood on the corner of her mask behind her back. “Right, Ino. See you soon.”

She slipped out her door and set off for Tsunade’s office, remembering the ache she had felt all the times she watched Naruto and Sasuke wave cheery goodbyes only to leave her for some unknown danger. For a moment her chest pulsed with guilt as she left Ino behind. She wondered if she had been right to make decisions that had lead her to a point where she could dole out the same misery to those she loved. Perhaps even after all this time, some part of her reveled in being the one sent into a danger that could not be spoken of, only to leave behind waiting loved ones.

She pressed the thoughts out of her mind and sent more chakra to her feet, shoving a little harder off the tiled roofs than she needed to. Her only job right now was to complete her mission and survive. Ino would be there when she returned.

* * *

She slipped through Tsunade’s window, noticing Konohamaru standing across from Tsunade’s desk with a somber expression. She tried to stifle her disappointment when she didn’t sense Kakashi’s chakra signature anywhere nearby, and took her place beside Konohamaru.

She bowed her head to Tsunade who gave her an exasperated look in return.

“There’s no time to beat around the bush,” Tsunade said, snatching a paper from the top of a towering stack and beginning to write furiously. “Konohamaru, tell Sakura what your team encountered.”

“About an hour out from Konoha on the way back from a mission, we encountered a severely injured man claiming to be from the Village Hidden in the Grass. He told us that they had suffered a great natural disaster—that there had been an earthquake that triggered the collapse of a nearby mountain and other parts of the surrounding forest.”

Sakura’s mouth went dry. “Where is this man?”

Tsunade’s golden eyes flashed. “Dead. He is in the morgue now. Shizune will assess him when she returns this afternoon from her diplomacy mission to Suna.”

“So you want me to travel there and heal the survivors.”

Tsuande nodded, slight pity in her eyes. “It won’t be pretty, but he was coming to us for aid. Kusagakure is generally considered an ally; even in times of peace we don’t want word getting out that our allies have been critically incapacitated.”

Sakura nodded back, flexing her hands into one of her travel gloves. “Will I be taking Kakashi?”

Tsunade’s eyes glowed with brief amusement at the poor attempt Sakura had made at nonchalance. Sakura had the uncomfortable feeling that Tsunade had read far more deeply into her casual question that she would have liked.

“Unfortunately, we sent him on a patrol to the edge of one of our borders with Genma this morning. Genma seemed to think he could benefit from some time to… think.”

Sakura kept her face impassive but felt a surge of irritation at the entertained curl of Tsunade’s lips.

“In any case,” Tsunade continued, we’ll send him after you when he returns in a few hours. At your pace, Kusagakure is only a four hour trip from here—he should catch up a couple hours after you arrive. I would send other ANBU with you, but all of our teams are either in the hospital or deployed. I would send jouunin, but we can’t risk the spread of this intel quite yet. We need to know the state of the village so we can structure our aid and diplomatic response.”

“I’ll be careful. If any of the landscape starts collapsing on me, I’ll break it.”

Tsunade gave her a grim smile. “That’s my Sakura.”

Sakura felt a strong surge of affection for the woman who had taught her to shatter boulders and coax life back into the dying. Tsunade knew she was sending her into the midst of a crisis, and trusted her to handle it.

“I’ll take care of them,” she said quietly.

Tsunade nodded, eyes gleaming with pride. “Go safely and quickly. Backup will be close behind.”

Sakura slipped out of the office, tying her mask over her face once more.

* * *

She knew something was wrong when she sensed unsuccessfully masked chakra signatures.

Once upon a time she might have been fooled, but her time in the ANBU had made her sensitive to the smallest irregularities in her environment. The low and guilty reverberations of their chakra nearly made her pause, but she decided against it. There were only ten or so of them—perhaps a scouting contingent from another village. The situation hadn’t grown so dire that she would need to assassinate any ninja in the vicinity of Kusagakure. She masked her own chakra, just to be careful, and continued on. She was only an hour or so out from the village and she dreaded to think what the difference of another hour would make before she could begin healing the survivors.

As the minutes went on, more and more chakra signatures trickled into her awareness, and her misgivings grew. When their numbers approached twenty, she pulled two kunai out and ran through an internal check of her chakra reserves. Despite her drunken evening out with Ino, her body had done a good job of cycling the out the fuzziness of her hangover. Her chakra wasn’t at full capacity, but it was full enough.

She sensed the ninja converging on her path to the village, effectively blocking her passage, and she grimaced beneath her mask. This would need to end quickly, both for her sake and the sake of the survivors waiting for her. 

She heard the first kunai whistling towards her before she saw it and flipped backwards out of its path. She stood on a tree branch, waiting for the assailants to reveal themselves. As they began to filter out of the trees she noticed Iwagakure headbands, all slashed through, with cruel faces beneath them.

Pieces clicked into place—this was a rogue cell of Iwagakure missing nin, probably the one that Tsunade had started receiving reports on a few months back. There had always been ninja in Iwagakure who had felt that they hadn’t been given the chance to obtain vengeance from the Third War, or who more recently missed having the opportunity to make deals with the Akatsuki. They caused problems from time to time, but there was always Kusagakure as a buffer, which stood between Iwagakure and Konoha.

This must have been their move—destroy Kusagakure once and for all to open easier access to Konoha for future opportunities to attack. She remembered what Konohamaru had said of the injured man they had found.

_An earthquake that triggered the collapse of a nearby mountain and other parts of the surrounding forest._

Yes, Sakura mused to herself. The shinobi from Iwagakure could certainly simulate a natural disaster with their ninjustsu. It probably hadn’t even taken an especially strong genjustsu to convince the injured man that was what he had seen.

“Where are the medics,” a gravelly voice rang out. A couple of the men snickered and Sakura narrowed her eyes as another piece of the puzzle slid into place. Of course they would have expected Konoha to send a large number of medics in response, especially if Konoha had no reason to believe the ‘disaster’ was foul play. Medics were a precious resource, and it would have been a massive blow to Konoha if a large number of their medics were unexpectedly ambushed.

“What makes you think I’m not a medic,” she called back, lazily spinning a kunai in her fingers.

“Your bloody mask suggests you’re better at killing than healing,” one of the ninja towards the back sniped.

Sakura felt something inside her go cold with an icy fury. Part of her began to play with the question—was she better at killing than healing? She immediately shut down that part of her brain. This was no time for guilt or inhibitions—these men would need to die before she could get to the village they were holding hostage.

As she crouched into a fighting position she bit her lip, hard, and spat blood onto the branch. The ninja closest to her laughed. “Are you already injured? Did Konoha send a half-dead ANBU coughing up blood to scope things out? I didn’t know the situation in the Leaf was so dire.”

She ignored him, and murmured her quiet message to Katsuyu. A small slug slipped into existence on the branch, then faded away unnoticed, already on her path to Tsunade. With that taken care of, Sakura shifted her two kunai into her fisted hands and decided the fastest way out of this would be a close-range melee. All their weapons were long blades—they would be useless once she got close.

Chakra blazed with a furious warmth in her firsts, gliding along the edges of her kunai. “Come see how good I am at killing,” she called in a low voice as the searing anticipation of the fight began to course through her body.

The first kunai sent singing her way was an invitation, and she accepted it gladly.

* * *

By the time Kakashi returned to the village, Genma had done his best to wring just about every emotion Kakashi had ever repressed back out of him. _Had he loved Rin when he was young?_ No, not really, or at least he didn’t remember whether or not he had. Not the way he remembered her dying. _When had he developed feelings for Sakura—was it when she was on his team?_ A vehement and slightly sickened **no** to that, and to be quite honest he wasn’t sure when he had developed the feelings. Part of him thought it might have been when Sasuke had put her under a genjutsu towards the end of the war and she had sprawled lifeless on the rocks after trying, for what felt like the millionth time, to appeal to his better nature. Belief in better natures was a rare thing, he had realized. And a beautiful thing.

However, he had told Genma nothing regarding that memory and had dryly delivered some choice expletives and suggestions as to where Genma could shove his senbon if he pursued that line of questioning any further.

In any case, when Kakashi dragged himself back through the gates, half of him wanted to flee far away from Sakura and anyone else for that matter. The other half wanted to do the exact opposite and tear through the village until he found her and demanded to know what she would have done if Ino hadn’t appeared the previous night and interrupted what had been one of the most terrifying and exhilarating moments in his life.

He hadn’t decided which of the two warring parts of himself had won, and was about to go to the bar and see if a few early afternoon drinks would help with the process when Konohamaru popped into existence before him and Genma with a hiss of smoke.

“Kakashi, the Hokage wants to see you immediately. It’s an emergency.”

A light touch of panic flickered at the edge of his mind but he firmly suppressed it. This is what being on the same team meant—they were sent as a unit. Whatever problem had arisen, he and Sakura would be dispatched to solve it, together.

* * *

“You sent her without me,” he asked in a cold and disbelieving voice.

Tsunade fixed him with a sharp glare. “Sakura might not have told you given that she’s modest to a fault, but she was an ANBU captain before she decided to shack up with you on the ‘dynamic duo from hell’ team. I can send her to a disaster site without a full retinue of ninja.”

He was just opening his mouth to say something that would have likely landed him far deeper in trouble than he ever should have ventured into with Tsunade when a small and pale form flickered to life on the desk before them.

“Ambush,” murmured a soft voice. “Iwagakure missing-nin, thirty to forty, planned attack, not a disaster.”

Kakashi and Tsunade watched in shocked silence as the small apparition of Katsuyu flickered back into nonexistence.

Kakashi’s eyes flashed to Tsunade’s and he watched as the blood drained from her face. She stared at him, her gaze flooding with a choking nameless fear that he felt rising in his own throat.

“Tsunade!” the door banged open against the wall and Shizune surged into the room. “The man wasn’t killed by a natural disaster—underneath the blunt injuries were kunai wounds. This was done by shinobi.”

A beat of silence, freezing and sharp.

“What have I done,” Tsunade whispered.

He was streaking out the window before she could say another word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLOOO.
> 
> sorry for the long absence! I had been pretty good with the weekly updates until now. Tbh, have hit a rough patch in my (rapidly crumbling) irl relationship and that has been taking up quite a bit of my time. 
> 
> ANYWAYS. Kakashi is a mess. Sakura is a mess. I love Genma. Lots of action coming up, perhaps some angst, all in good spirit. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	12. Buried (again)

Sakura was beginning to realize how dangerous the situation was when she felt a kunai embed itself in her back.

She grimaced, flicking a kunai behind herself and estimating its trajectory based on the angle of her own wound. She half-waited to hear the sickening thump of metal meeting flesh as she ducked under the wide swipe of her current opponent. She stepped under his blade, pivoting backwards and slapping her hand to his vest where she felt the bones of his chest collapse under her fingertips. When she heard more kunai whistling in the air, she snatched his body up and flung it into the barrage as a makeshift shield.

She hurled herself into the next knot of ninja that were trying to keep her at a distance with their kunai and ninjustsu. The longer she let them batter her from afar, the lower her chances of her survival.

The thought struck her as odd for a moment as she quenched a katon justsu with a messy one-handed earth seal. She might not survive this battle, she mused with a detached vagueness. A silvery blade drove towards her and she swiveled backwards, allowing it to pierce the flesh underneath her collarbone where no major ligaments would be severed. She wrenched the blade back out and swung it cleanly through the torso of its previous owner. Her chakra enhanced strength made slicing through sinew like slicing through warm butter.

Several more passes with the blade left it shuddering and cracking inside of a new target—another reason she didn’t use thinner or longer blades. They rarely survived the brute force of her blows for very long.

What would it mean then, if she were to die now? The rush of adrenaline and the total control of her bodily instincts allowed her to approach the question clinically. Would Tsunade have died facing this? The corner of her gaze caught the approach of vicious uppercut, along with a kunai in the grip of its deliverer. She danced back and the tip of the kunai only nicked her jaw. The hot flush of blood streaking down the side of her neck was a new annoyance as she darted forward to impale the man on her fist in retaliation. His muscle and bone parted between her fingers with a squelch and she snatched her hand back out.

No, Sakura decided, ducking beneath a kick aimed at her head. Tsunade had used her Creation Rebirth Jutsu too many times in the last decade and during the war. Perhaps a younger Tsunade could have escaped?

She hissed with pain as senbon laced their way up the back of her calf. She sent some of her healing chakra to deal with the damage as she substituted herself away. No, she decided again, staring back at the cluster of ninja she had flashed away from. Perhaps not even a younger Tsunade would survive this.

She watched as the group swiveled to face her and found that her breathing was uncomfortably wet with blood. She sent a pulse of all the healing chakra she could spare through her body, staving off the beginnings of a bodily shutdown. She had started with thirty of them, and now there were only about seven left. She sensed more approaching from the east, and more of them even closer to the village.

Who was she, then, to think that she could survive this if even Tsunade might not have? Reinforcements wouldn’t be able to make it to her for at least another several hours. She took in a quieting breath, feeling the low flickers of rage rising in her stomach. She would not die here. Not alone and not at the hands of those who would wipe out an entire village simply because it was in their way.

As the group of the enemy ninja began to surge toward her, she allowed the searing rage to lick its way up her throat. The benefit, she thought, of having a hands-on fighting style was that it could easily be staged as her only skillset during the first half of a battle. She watched a woman’s eyes widen with fear as she recognized the seals Sakura’s bloodied hands were flicking through.

Before she could call out a warning to her comrades, a large flame had surged to life and inhaled them with a vengeful crackle. Sakura heard screams, smelt burning flesh, and somehow felt nothing but a cold conviction despite the warmth flaring from her lips.

She would not die here.

More ninja crashed in from the trees around her—reinforcements—and she ignored the agony of her body as she shot toward them with a wild scream.

This would not be the end, she decided as she let power course through her veins, emanating from her seal. Not when there was so much left to prove.

* * *

The three-hour journey was hell.

At each moment Kakashi wondered if Sakura had just succumbed to the enemy, or if their reinforcements had overwhelmed her. It was a torturous replay of the same loop—her being sliced through with a blade, her body being reduced to bubbling flesh by fire, poison turning her veins green and sickly. Perhaps the worst vision was rocks descending on her from above, leaving nothing but a broken body hidden beneath stone and the barest hint of bloodied pink hair.

The irony was piercing.

The fury he felt was a vicious kind he hadn’t felt in years. It reminded him of being a child, of staring at the grave of a parent who was supposed to _stay_. It reminded him of later staring at the broken body of his friend who had saved him not once, but twice, and _honestly_ who had given him the fucking right to—

To have made him care so deeply.

He realized that the source of his fury, his vehemence, his desire to rip and shred, had returned once again because somehow, for another agonizing and ill-fated time, he _cared_ about what would happen in a way that sent his body and soul screaming. 

He remembered her hand brushing his face outside of the bar and what he had thought when he felt her skin against his.

_His life had always been an odd mix of tragedy and miracle. And she was both._

The pendulum swung back and forth in his mind’s eye and he wondered with a bitterness that made his teeth ache if this time he would get the miracle.

Or if he would be met with tragedy.

* * *

Kakashi nearly gagged on the smell of cloying and burnt flesh that flooded his senses. A tree branch snapped under his foot as he surged faster towards the carnage. He could sense a few chakra signatures—and one was, _yes, yes—_

He burst out of the undergrowth into a long clearing and saw Sakura glowing with the light of her seal as she fended off a group of ninja. Her neck and face were drenched with blood, and her eyes were wild and ferocious. Her mask laid cracked on the ground a distance from her, abandoned and slick with red. 

Her name was halfway out of his mouth when he watched as one of the ninja behind her swiveled into a strike with his kunai, aiming for the part of her back that shielded her heart. 

Her eyes flashed to Kakashi’s, just as they had in the bar when that _stupid inconsequential_ person asked her how many people she had killed. Once again it was like they were trapped together in their own version of reality and insulated from the outside world.

Her eyes were wide with the sharp electricity of surprise as she took him in, and then he _knew_ she could sense the kunai coming for her, that she _knew_ it would impale her, that she _knew_ he was too far away and the blade was moving too quickly for her to dodge and he couldn’t—

She smiled.

And her name turned to a ragged yell in his mouth as he watched the metal sheath itself in her back.

And just as his vision began to shimmer with red disbelief because _no, he couldn’t have witnessed that and he needed to **change** it_, a cloud of smoke burst and the bleeding body disappeared into it.

His mind stumbled, heavy with panic and grief and the desire for _revenge_ , but then he realized.

_It hadn’t been her._

A clone.

A disbelieving and shocked laugh shook itself from his body. He felt like he had been lit on fire and doused in the same instant. A clone with her same chakra signature.

Brilliant.

Her would-be murderers looked around in confusion and Kakashi felt rage uncoil inside of his chest, the chirping of birds singing to life with blue electricity in the palm of his hand.

He would give them only seconds, he thought as he streaked towards them. Only seconds, because he refused to imagine _(but now he didn’t have to imagine, did he?)_ what would happen if he was too late.

* * *

When he reached the village, the air was thick with the coppery smell of blood and dust—the smell of a landslide. Yet the protrusions from the earth were unnatural, and had to have been constructed from a jutsu designed to send structures plummeting to the earth.

Slugs were everywhere.

They were clinging to people lying prone in the streets, seeping into gashed holes of collapsed buildings that must have contained trapped people, and resting on bloodied children who were breathing raspily in the streets.

Part of him wanted to be shocked by the horror of it all, but the stronger and perhaps more selfish part of himself was both furious and terrified by the fact that Sakura had not simply decided to survive the onslaught until reinforcements came.

She had decided to make the village survive with her.

He swore at the breathtaking selflessness of it, and what it must be costing her.

And what it could be costing him.

He heard a faint echoing whisper of Katsuyu calling to him at the edges of his mind.

_North end of the village, under the rubble._

He swept the surrounding area with his senses as he struggled to find her chakra signature. Usually her chakra signature felt massive—like a well of carefully contained and meticulously managed power. The absence of its solid presence was a cause for great concern.

Finally, he felt a spark of it, and saw a teetering building that seemed to sway in a nonexistent wind. He darted towards it and noticed a slow stream of people climbing out of a crumpled entrance, clinging to one another as they staggered away from the rubble.

He ignored their cries of warning as he swung himself through the sagging entrance and under a beam and—

There she was.

His breath caught in his throat at the sight of her. She was drenched with blood like her clone had been—perhaps not all her own—and her body seemed to be pulsing with a dull blue beat of chakra as her arms upheld the caving ceiling. Her head hung downwards toward the floor as she swayed under the weight of the groaning building.

In the next instant he had unfrozen and was at her side, his hands pressing tentatively on her shoulder. Her head swung to face him and even in the grime and filth of crimson blood and dirt her eyes were so _green_ it made him ache.

“Hello,” she said in a hoarse voice.

He just stared, desperately trying to figure out how to fix the situation. He possessed many advantages and strengths, but he did not possess Sakura’s monstrous strength. He couldn’t take her place under the crushing weight of this two story building. And somehow he knew that if he snatched her and took her out from the building before she was ready to leave it, she would never forgive him. 

“Get them out,” she croaked. Then she gave him a wry smile with blood covered teeth, somehow beautiful and horrifying at the same time. “Then get me out, because I think I’m dying.”

It was agony to obey, but he knew she wouldn’t leave until the people had been cleared from the wreckage. He felt himself blur with speed as he snatched up the injured, hurling them over his shoulders and dumping them out on the side of the road before streaking back inside for yet another trip.

A minute of these trips trickled by and he heard her gasp, the building giving a sickening crunch, and he watched as she staggered to her knees, still pressing the weight of it up but letting out a sharp hiss of strain. The ceiling was now several feet lower and he had to crouch to fit, but somehow all thoughts of self-preservation were gone from his mind.

“Hurry,” she managed.

He snatched the last group, a family cowering in the corner, and had them deposited on the street in the next breath. He practically flew back inside, his heart hammering painfully in his chest. When he snatched her tension-filled body that was slippery with blood and pressed her against himself, sections of the unsupported ceiling seemed to fall in slow motion.

He stumbled back into the sunlight with her and they tumbled to the ground as he tried to shield her from the impact of the roll as much as he could. He eased her off of his chest and onto her back and he felt his whole body pulse with _pain_ at what he saw.

She was coated with a thin layer of dust that was sticky with the blood that covered her. Now that he was closer, he could see which wounds were her own. A steady stream of blood was leaking from a wound underneath her collarbone that looked like it had been hastily healed only to have broken back open. She had a kunai stuck in her back, and what seemed like a hundred other shallow lacerations and cuts were leaking thin rivulets of blood in a constant stream.

Her eyes flickered open and he desperately wanted her to tell him it was all right, that she would be able to fix herself—

But he knew she couldn’t.

She smiled up at him, eyes flickering with a faint teasing light.

“Kakashi.”

He nodded numbly and realized that his hand that was grasping at hers was shaking violently. His hand that held lightning was reduced to utter helplessness while he watched the woman he loved die.

“As charming as it was for you to tell me that you liked me…” She broke off, coughing as if the bones of her rib cage were grating on one another, and his hand frantically smoothed the bloody hair plastered to her temple, trying to communicate what was too painful for him to verbalize. “I think perhaps…” Her lips curled with a small knowing smile, and suddenly every single part of him was on fire. “I think I might love you,” she managed quietly.

He pressed her bloody hand against his face, dragging his mask down impatiently. He wanted to feel her skin against his, wanted to somehow force the current moment back to just twenty-four hours earlier when her same hand had pressed against his face, curious and hungry for touch in a moment that was so full of _potential_.

“I think I might love you too,” he whispered back. “But you need to give me more time to figure it out.”

She laughed, her lips wet with new blood. “I know. Both of us never had the time we wanted with people we loved. But the Creation Rebirth Jutsu is the only thing keeping me alive right now, and I’m spending most of it on maintaining the slugs.”

“Let them go, channel it back on yourself.”

“Oh, Kakashi,” she sighed with a soft and pained wheeze of breath. “You know I could never. I’ve always been silly about things like this.”

Pain gripped him like a vice. “Your sacrifices have never been silly.”

She smiled. “These last few months you’ve seen me so clearly.” Her eyes flickered shut, smile still on her face. “It has been such a gift,” she whispered.

He was about to scream with grief, shake her, demand that she keep looking at him with eyes that were so _green_ but then he was sprawling backwards across shards of debris. His head shot up and in his half-conscious and grief-riddled state he saw two blonde heads curved over Sakura and then was that—

“Shizune?” he croaked.

The three women didn’t spare him a glance. He propped himself back up and watched as Shizune, Ino, and Tsunade covered different parts of Sakura’s body in an unearthly green glow of healing chakra. Kakashi realized Ino’s eyes were streaming tears, but she seemed completely unaware as her focus remained on knitting back together the skin of Sakura’s torso.

“We need to act fast. She’s losing the jutsu and once she loses it she will be able to die again.” Tsuande pressed a glowing hand against Sakura’s forehead. “Do you hear me, Sakura,” she asked loudly. “Keep the jutsu going until we’ve stabilized you.”

Sakura didn’t stir or answer, but her seal seemed to flicker weakly with a brighter purple light, if only for an instant. Kakashi watched as a single tear streaked down Tsunade’s face. “Don’t you dare die on me,” she hissed. “I’ve taught you too much. We’ve been through too much.”

Kakashi watched as they began to piece her body back into wholeness and maybe just for one ill-fated second, he let himself wonder if this time would be different.

If this time, they would get to go home.

He buried his face in his hands and for the first time in years allowed himself the simple luxury of crying maskless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof I don't think I realized how evil I had been until people mentioned the last chapter being a cliffhanger!
> 
> oops, lol
> 
> IN ANY CASE~ I enjoyed the comments so much I felt v motivated to follow up with a quick update! I suppose this chapter is also evil in its own way-- two almost (?) deaths back to back? poor Kakashi lol. I don't know what possessed me to do it but i was feeling particularly vicious. 
> 
> I thought about ending the chapter with him crying @ her half-dead body (because truly who here doesn't love a little melodrama) but then I was like wait what about all the other people in Sakura's life who love her so dearly?? And then I was like HMMM coincidentally those women would be the only ones with the ability to save her!
> 
> Also, perhaps my favorite moment in this whole fic is when Kakashi finds Sakura holding up the building and realizes he can't take it from her. I love that there are things that Sakura can do that none the other members of Team 7 can do-- even the copy nin wouldn't have the chakra control for it !! I don't think her skills get enough credit / appreciation. 
> 
> Anyways, I am dismounting from my soap box lol. Thank you for reading! I would love to know what you thought!


	13. Irreplaceable

The journey back to the village seemed to take decades.

He had watched in the street as Tsunade, Ino, and Shizune made Sakura’s body pulse with a vivid green light. Each woman maintained a face of sharp and intense focus that had stopped him from interrupting them with the swirling flood of questions he longed to ask. 

_Will she be alright? What is happening? What is wrong with her? When will you know if she’s going to make it?_

He didn’t know how long they had remained there with people and slugs streaming past them. The sound of post-crisis reunions—people sobbing into one another and screaming with relief once they located another loved one—grated on his ears like taunts. Part of him wanted to bellow at them to all shut up, because couldn’t they see that the reason—the woman—that had kept them alive was _dying_?

Finally Tsunade rolled back on her heels, smoothing a sweaty piece of blonde hair out of her face and pressing bloody fingers to her temples. Ino and Shizune glanced up at her, breaking their focus for the first time since they started healing Sakura.

“Here or back in Konoha,” Ino asked.

Tsunade cast a critical eye around herself, taking in the crumbling debris and staggering groups of people congregating in the streets.

“We don’t know if the hospital here survived the attack and she needs her own operating room. The poison might—”

“Poison,” Kakashi finally choked, interrupting them as he had so desperately wished to since they started.

Tsunade’s eyes flashed to him as if she had entirely forgotten he was there. Her eyes softened and hardened again within the span of a second. “Yes, poison. And stress fractures, and internal hemorrhaging, and blood loss, and complete chakra depletion and—”

“Tsunade, that’s enough,” Shizune snapped, uncharacteristically sharp with her mentor. “What is the plan? We can’t hold her like this for long.”

Kakashi felt a dull roaring in his ears as he leaned around them to get a good look at Sakura. Her face was like a white sheet, the black lines of her seal stark against the deathly pallor. A cut below her jaw was still languidly oozing blood that trickled down the side of her neck. He saw bruises blossoming everywhere—on her shoulders where she had held up a second story of concrete, on her left cheekbone, on her purpling hands. He sucked in a harsh breath and reached out a trembling hand, smoothing back some of the hair from her neck. The three women tensed as he did so, ready to stop him if he did anything to jeopardize the healing progress they had made, but no one stopped him as he rested tentative fingers against the warm and sticky skin of her neck.

A soft and thready pulse, barely there. He let out a quiet breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.

“We need to get her back to Konoha,” Tsunade said in a softer voice. “We’ll have to make stops along the way to restabilize her—it’s risky but we don’t know if they’ll have what we need here and she can’t wait any longer.”

“Is she going to be alright,” he asked, unable to stop himself from asking what he knew was an uncertain and naïve question. Part of him felt soul-crushingly young, his face still bare and maskless. He couldn’t imagine what was written on it for the world to see.

Tsunade hesitated. “We won’t know unless we’re able to get her back and see how the procedures go.” There was a solemn pause as they all digested the fact that her tenuous hold on life could easily be snapped in the next several hours. “But I’ve learned not to bet against Sakura,” Tsunade whispered.

“I’ll carry her,” Shizune said, sliding her arms beneath Sakura’s legs and her back. “I’ll be able to monitor her and decide if we need to stop.” She cast a look at Tsunade before she could protest. “You need to conserve your chakra to take care of her when we take breaks.”

“Can’t you heal her as you run?”

Three pairs of incredulous eyes turned to him. “That’s impossible,” Tsunade said flatly, obviously wearying of his questions. “The best we can do is track her status, and even that is difficult when moving.”

Kakashi nodded without further comment, but his mind flashed unbidden to Sakura carrying Tenten’s prone body, her arms flaring with a searing green light that made her eyes glow between the slits of her mask. Some insane part of him wanted to laugh as yet another layer of cruel irony fell into place—the person best equipped to get Sakura back to the village was Sakura herself.

He watched as Shizune heaved Sakura up, leaning her lolling head against her chest. Ino swiped impatiently at the tears that were still flowing down her face, tucking Sakura’s arms securely against Shizune’s torso so that they wouldn’t flap as she was carried.

And the journey began.

They made it half an hour into the trees before they needed to make their first stop. Shizune called out for a halt and settled Sakura against the forest floor as the other women converged, their hands already glowing green.

Kakashi had never felt more useless in his life. Tsunade had told him that he would be the only one to engage in combat if any enemies appeared as the others needed to conserve their chakra for healing, but Sakura had done her job of wiping them out too well. Behind the dull beat of contained panic, he mused that any enemy foolish enough to attack them while he was in this state would regret it in the most terrible of ways. The thought nearly concerned him for a moment—the utter fierceness of bloodlust he felt towards a phantom enemy that might impede their progress—but then it was gone beneath the waves of fresh panic as he watched Sakura’s body sway in Shizune’s arms.

The closer they got to the village, the more frequently they needed to stop. It went from every twenty minutes to every ten minutes. He felt the tension growing, and he kept a careful eye on the tight line of worry in Tsunade’s forehead. He knew what their growing concern meant, even if he lacked their medical expertise. The stops themselves also seemed to grow longer, as if there was more and more to patch up each time. A small voice in the back of his mind began to encourage him to accept the inevitable, and he snarled at it with a fury that sent his whole mind blank.

When he saw the gates, the relief that flooded him was almost paralyzing.

“Kakashi,” he heard Shizune call.

He drew up beside her and he noticed the strain on her pinched face. The journey had been difficult on him, but he couldn’t imagine the additional weight of both tracking and keeping her alive.

“We’re close enough now that she can make it to the hospital without another stop. We’re chakra-depleted and you’re faster than us. Take her straight to the hospital and have them start working on her. We’ll be right behind you.”

Without a moment to spare he slipped his arms beneath Shizune’s, snatching Sakura and pressing her against his chest. He marveled for a moment at how light she was, and some perverse part of him wondered if it was because of all the blood she had lost.

He shot off towards the gates, taking care not to jostle her as he felt his surroundings blur. The guards at the gate were a momentary flash of uniform and yelling but he was past them in the next second, refusing to even consider the idea of stopping. Then he was at the hospital, yanking up a window so quickly that it shook with a bang in its frame. He leapt in, eyes and heads swiveling to face him.

“She needs an operating room right away,” he said in a voice that he nearly didn’t recognize as his own. His chest heaved for a moment as he considered strangling them for their stunned and inactive silence as they took in the bloodied form tucked protectively against his side.

A woman who looked like a senior medic was the first to spring into action. “Prepare room seven,” she snapped to someone at her side. She gestured him forward with her as a flurry of activity began. People ran ahead of them down the hall and he itched to follow but he matched the woman’s swift pace.

“Is it Sakura?” the medic asked with a brusque professionalism, her eyes fixed straight ahead.

Kakashi glanced down and realized with the blood and dirt in her hair, it was no longer a vivid and identifiable pink.

“Yes,” he managed.

The woman closed her eyes for a brief second, then banged the door open to a room and gestured for him to lay her on the table.

“I want every available surgeon in here,” she hissed to a person at her side as Kakashi forced himself to relinquish his hold on Sakura. He stretched her out on the operating table with one last brush of his fingers against her temple. Not one second had passed before he felt himself being shoved back by the surge of medics in masks.

“Out,” the woman snapped at him as she snatched up instruments he didn’t recognize. He felt himself begin to bristle with objection but she cut him off, “If you want her to survive we need to focus and we can’t do that with frantic loved ones breathing down our necks. Out.”

_Loved ones._

He took one last look at Sakura, imprinting her pale face into his mind’s eye with the knowledge that it might be the last time he saw her alive. Somehow he knew that even without his sharingan, he would never be able to forget the image of her stretched out in a sea of scrubs, pale, bloodied, and absolutely still.

With that he stumbled out into the hall and sank down next to the door, pressing his head to his hands. A second later he felt the searing presence of Tsunade, Shizune, and Ino’s spiking chakras. They rushed past him into her operating room and he was left alone.

He wished that the hours would pass by in a blank and dull blur, but each moment felt vivid and knife-sharp. His body pulsed with an adrenaline that cast the world around him into sharp detail—the bloody trail of crisp red drops on the bland linoleum that he had trailed in, the methodical _tick_ of the clock down the hall, the slow murmur of the staff as word spread throughout the hall that _it was Sakura_ and _are they sure it was her?_

Each moment passed like its own minute torture. No one asked him to move. He wondered if it was because they were too frightened of the haggard looks he shot them when they drew too close to him.

All he could do was wait. And he did.

Finally the door cracked open and a slow stream of exhausted medics made their way out. He leapt to his feet in an instant and they were flinching back from him and the flurry of his demanding questions— _is she alright, did she make it—_

A firm hand pressed against his chest and propelled him back. Ino gazed at him with stern eyes. “Stop frightening them. Some of them are civilians.”

He shuddered with barely controlled energy as the medics took the opportunity to stream past him, hurrying down the hall and back to safety.

“Is she alright,” he finally croaked, asking Ino directly.

She closed her eyes and scrubbed at them. “As alright as we can make her. The strain she put her body under out of sheer force of will… I’ll kill her for it if she wakes up.”

His mouth went dry. “If?”

Ino turned her gaze back on him, and this time there was a piece of pity buried beneath her own concern. “The next two days are critical. We’ve done about as much for her as we can but now it is up to her body. To have been pushed to the edge and yanked back from it doesn’t always end well. Tsunade and Shizune are finishing up some last minute touches, and then we wait.”

He stared at the door, feeling a slow pulse of pain begin in his chest. “You know she could heal people and run at the same time,” he finally said. “I saw her do it with Tenten. Her arms were green.”

Something in Ino’s face crumpled. “Did she tell you about the time that I was… that I almost…” He nodded. “I just keep thinking,” she continued, “that she was good enough to be able to bring me back from the edge, but I might not have been good enough to do it for her.”

Kakashi watched as another tear streaked down Ino’s face. He knew he should say something comforting and reassure her that of course she shouldn’t expect herself to be able to do the impossible. But all he found when he tried to reach inside himself for the words was an unutterable sense of pain.

The door swung open and Tsunade and Shizune emerged, looking more haggard than he had seen them since the war. He stepped forward to enter the operating room and a hand thumped against his chest.

“What do you think you’re doing,” Tsunade snapped. “That room is for medics and patients only.”

He felt a molten fury well forth inside of him, bleeding into his eyes. It felt the way his sharingan had when it was triggered by anger.

“It is not my fault you sent her there to die,” he said quietly. Tsunade’s face blanched and she recoiled from him. “I am going into that room, and I will be staying there until she needs to be operated on again or until she wakes up.”

He strode forward, pressing the door open and ignoring the low stream of words that Shizune began to speak in his defense.

_“—he’s afraid of losing her like we are and he hasn’t been able to help heal—”_

The door swung shut behind him, blocking the rest of the sound out. All that was left was the quiet beeping of her monitors. A medic sitting in the corner glanced up when he entered but said nothing. He took a slow step forward.

They had switched the operating table for a white gurney, and the familiar waffled hospital blankets were tucked around her. Her seal’s markings had receded from her face, which suddenly seemed so much smaller for their absence.

He wasn’t sure if it was the bright white light or the hospital sheets that made her face seem so pale but he hoped again that it wasn’t still because of blood loss. He noticed that the cut beneath her jaw that had been leaking blood was scabbed over in a thin crimson line with thin strips of tape holding it together. The absence of all emotion from her blank face was unsettling—it felt profoundly _unlike_ Sakura, who was always ebbing and surging with tides of emotion and fury all at once.

He took another step forward, a strange feeling welling up inside him when the door opened again. He tensed, prepared to unleash some of the chaos swirling around inside his chest if they had come to make him leave, but it was just Ino.

She stepped in and without comment set a new chair beside Sakura’s bed. He stared at it blankly for a moment and she snorted.

“What, you were just going to hover over her for the next forty-eight hours?”

He lowered himself warily into the chair, feeling somewhat like a wild animal under observation after it had been wounded.

He started to say thank you, but before he could Ino had interrupted him. “What you did out there would have meant a lot to her.”

He nodded, knowing what she meant. Ino patted his back briefly and then turned to leave, her exhausted chakra signature flickering lowly.

He stared at Sakura’s face, beginning to process the last twenty-four hours. He had thought she was going to die in his arms. They had said goodbye to one another.

 _These last few months you have seen me so clearly._

He realized with a sudden clarity that he might never have told her how he really felt. They would have kept dancing around one another, taking turns getting angry in bars after missions or lingering too close to one another during training sessions or missions. It was only now that she was here in front of him, nearly battered to death and painfully heroic that he realized how stupid he had been.

It never would have been easy to lose Sakura. Even without the three or four months of being on the same team, it would have been devastating.

But the feeling he had when he first came upon the decoy body she had set on that first rescue mission was a completely different feeling than what he was experiencing now.

Then he had felt grief. Now, he felt an intense agony at the loss of something he was beginning to recognize as irreplaceable.

Before they had started working on the same team again, he had known what he would continue to do if Sakura were gone. Now, he didn’t. There was no before or after this hospital room and the low sound of her beeping monitors. There was only this, and his desperate will that the monitor would continue to show that her heart was still beating.

“I’m such a stupid man, Sakura,” he whispered to her under his breath. “You need to survive to hear me admit it to you.”

And with that, the waiting began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eek I am so sorry that it has been so long! The time really got away from me! Writing this chapter after such a long time felt a little awkward and I hope it doesn't show too much! 
> 
> Thank you for sticking with this and continuing to read! Hopefully from here on out we will be back on the weekly update schedule. And thank you so much for all your kind words in your reviews-- they make me laugh/cry and I feel so grateful to anyone who has taken the time to share that they appreciated my work! Thank you again, and I hope you enjoy!


	14. Moments

Each hour inched by, moment by moment. He longed for the release of disassociation or a sense of distance from reality, but everything remained sharp and clear. His eyes traced down her pale face, noting the fading purples of the bruises that the medics had touched up. Her expression was blank, but there seemed to be a residual tension at the corners of her lips. He wondered again how long she had managed to maintain her justsu after they had left the village, and how she had managed it in a state of half-conscious near death. He wondered whether or not she had been in pain while they carried her back to Konoha during those terrifying and uncertain hours.

The door swung open awhile after his vigil had begun and he sensed Ino approaching the hospital bed. She gazed down at Sakura with him for a moment and sighed.

“Would you like to help me clean her hair?”

He glanced up in confusion. “What?”

“Her hair still has all the nasty blood and dirt in it. We don’t know when she will wake up, so she might as well be clean and comfortable as she rests. This is something the nurses usually do, but quite frankly they’re all terrified of you.”

He tore his eyes from Sakura’s face and looked up at Ino. She had a fragile expression, despite the stubborn set of her quivering chin. She looked as though she half-expected him to start berating her for not being able to wake Sakura up. A darker part of him certainly felt the impulse, but another and larger part of him felt the same overwhelming fragility she did— the sense that he might shatter into pieces in the next moment.

“I would like that,” he said quietly. 

Ino nodded and lowered the top of Sakura’s bed down a few inches and he watched intently, ready to spring into action if Sakura shifted or reacted to the movement. Ino’s deft fingers swept the messy shoulder length strands of Sakura’s hair off the end of the bed, careful not to catch on any tangles. She left the room for a moment and returned with a sponge, a comb, and a small tub of water that he could hear slosh from side to side with each step.

“Now I doubt you’ve ever done this before, but we want to make sure we don’t move her head around too much. We’re just going to rinse her hair out and use the sponge to clean around her hairline.”

He nodded, accepting the tub of water and taking a position behind the bed with Ino. She guided the tub until most of Sakura’s hair was pooled in it. He watched dirt and the rust of dried blood spiral out into the water, turning what was once clear into murky opaqueness. Ino sighed.

“She really did a number on it, didn’t she? I’ll come back with some fresh water.”

He sensed Ino leave, but he was caught up again in the sight of Sakura’s closed eyes, of the purple beneath them.

* * *

Ino spent a few minutes longer than she would have liked waiting for the water at the sink to warm for a second tub. She knew that it was silly to be worried about leaving Kakashi alone with Sakura. If some threat came anywhere near the room he would probably shred it to pieces. She had the sense that he only let her near Sakura because he had deemed her helpful. Yet still, she felt like she needed to be there in case something happened.

She wondered again what had passed between the two of them before she arrived with Tsunade and Shizune. Any teammate’s final moments would be gut-wrenching to sit through, but when she had first seen Kakashi through the haze of her own tears she had been shocked. He was maskless for the first time, and the sharpness of the grief and anguish written across his face was stunning. She had seen Kakashi grieve before—she had seen the whole village grieve during the war—but his familiar blank sadness had been completely overwritten by the face of a man who was burning. The image had echoed in her head for the last several hours, as did his hunched silhouette at the side of her bed. 

The door handle to Sakura’s room clicked beneath her fingers and she slid in quietly to avoid startling him, but she found herself struck dumb by the sight before her.

Kakashi was standing where she had left him, but he had started combing through Sakura’s hair with his fingers to get rid of the debris. Ino watched his fingers move with a clumsy and achingly gentle tenderness, picking apart larger clumps of dirt and sifting through pieces of plaster. His slow and careful movements made something in her chest ache.

“Did you bring something for the knots,” he finally asked in a quiet voice. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get them out without hurting her.”

Ino nodded and swallowed the knot of emotion in her throat. “Yeah, I have a bottle of detangler for stuff like this.”

She joined him at the head of the bed and sponged some of the dirt off Sakura’s forehead while he continued to gently sift the dirt out of her hair and into the first tub of water. When it finally seemed like there was nothing left in her hair but tangles, Ino wordlessly passed him the fresh water. He watched as she squirted a large handful of the detangler into Sakura’s hair, starting at the ends and working her way up to the scalp. She offered him the comb and he took it uncertainly.

“I haven’t—”

“It’s okay, I’ll show you. Start at the bottom and get out the little tangles, yeah?”

He nodded, his hands gathering up the ends of her hair with a gentleness that snatched at her breath. She could see the raised and thick lines of scars on his hands from using chidori, along with all the other smaller scars that all shinobi who handled weapons had. Yet he held Sakura’s hair like it was something that would shatter, and he moved the comb with a careful tenderness, spending long spans of time on even the smallest of tangles. 

When they reached larger matts, Ino would help by squirting more of the detangler into the knots and loosening them with expert fingers. They worked together in a meditative silence, and Ino could tell he was taking as much relief from being able to help Sakura, even in this small insignificant way, as she was.

When they finally finished, Ino wrapped Sakura’s hair into a towel and draped it over the edge of the bed to dry. She took a step back, swiping the wetness from the corners of her eyes as Kakashi trailed one last touch against Sakura’s temple.

“Thank you, Ino,” he said in the same quiet voice he had been using since he had faced down Tsunade.

“Of course,” she whispered.

As she left to get some more rest to replenish her chakra, she paused in the doorway and looked back in. She had known the loneliness Sakura had felt in the last year and the way that she had convinced herself that when push came to shove, she would find herself alone and without someone who would stay. Ino watched as Kakashi resumed his place at Sakura’s bedside, slipping the limp fingers of her left hand back between his palms. She felt a tide of joy and anguish wash over her as she clicked the door shut again.

* * *

Kakashi managed to stay awake through the first two nights. Ino had gently encouraged him to sleep, and he had managed terse nods in response. He was no idiot. He knew what the hovering groups of medics meant. He knew why Tsunade was pacing in the hallway, her footsteps heavy with anger and guilt.

Sakura should have been awake by now, and the fact that she wasn’t meant that her chakra system and the rest of her body wasn’t bouncing back from their healing in the way they were supposed to. He had heard of cases like this—ninja who had depleted their chakra too close to absolute zero and ended up comatose for over-extending themselves.

He didn’t know what the medics knew, but he knew that as long as Sakura remained in the hospital bed, he would remain in the crappy folding chair Ino had set up for him at her side. The idea of Sakura waking up alone and disoriented was more distressing to him than he could vocalize, but the medics had learned to deal with his hovering, even when he had to be gently asked by Ino to move over.

Occasionally he felt himself slipping into the dull haze of anxious sleep, which he knew wouldn’t be restful at all.

He was drifting back to awareness from the loose clutches of bad dream where he had been running with Sakura’s body but without Tsunade, Shizune, or Ino to save her. The waffle print of the hospital blanket on the side of Sakura’s bed was pressing up into his cheek and he blinked several times, trying to clear away the fog of his exhaustion.

He was just sitting up, Sakura’s hand still loosely pressed between two of his and then there was—

Green.

He stared, not-comprehending, at the pale green eyes set in her exhausted face. He felt his breath leave his body in a slow rush, unsure if he was trapped in some new and crueler dream, when a corner of her lips twitched into a familiar wry half-smile. It was the smile she gave him when she burnt their fish over the campfire or accidentally broke a bone in his hand during a spar.

“Hello,” she whispered, her voice paper-thin but achingly familiar.

“Sakura,” he heard himself ask, his voice cracking halfway through her name.

She nodded, her eyes gleaming with a film of tears and a tenderness and appreciation that made his chest pulse.

“We just woke up at the same—”

But by then he had already surged forward, across the white space of the bed, and he was holding her face between his hands so gently because he was still half-afraid that she would break, and she was laughing at him for it, and then he had yanked his mask down and his lips were on hers and she was smiling into his mouth, her lips chapped and her skin dry and too warm, but still with that subtle smell amid all the antiseptic that was just _Sakura—_

“You are _suffocating_ my student!”

He felt a hand hook itself unceremoniously into the back of his shirt and haul him backwards off Sakura’s hospital bed. If he hadn’t been exhausted and high on the brief kiss he probably would have swiveled around and started swinging his fists at the source of the voice, but he could only blink, trying to regain a sense of himself and where he was.

As he gradually regained a sense of awareness, he saw Shizune, Ino, and Tsunade clustered around Sakura, all swiping tears from the corners of their eyes and laughing. Ino caught his eye and gave him a saucy wink through a tearful giggle. He felt the impulse to yank his mask back up, but he remembered the moment they had found him, maskless and mourning over her body. It felt right for this moment of recovery to be a mirror image to that one, to dispel its darkness.

“I’m not your student anymore,” Sakura was grumbling half-heartedly as she clung to the older woman.

“You sure as hell have a lot more to learn from me if you think it’s okay to go off martyring yourself—”

“Lay off her for now, Lady Tsunade, she’s just waking up—”

“And making out in your hospital bed, like a couple of teenagers! At your age, Sakura? At _his_ age? In _your own_ hospital?”

“I think I’ve earned some liberties, haven’t I,” Sakura managed in a haughty but weak voice. “What’s the point of being in charge if you don’t get to break your own rules?”

Tsunade gave her a formidable glare but it gave way to an expression of massive love and relief. “I am so sorry I sent you there, Sakura, I had no idea—”

“I’m glad you did send me. More people would have died if you hadn’t—”

“Are you _insane_ ,” she bellowed back, her face lighting up with anger again. “I want to hear you promise that you will never do something so monumentally _stupid_ ever again!”

Kakashi was simply watching them exchange verbal volleys, feeling himself expand with a feeling of such love and tenderness that he thought he would explode. It was a foreign feeling, though not an unwelcome one. He was just thinking there would never be another moment in his life as happy as this one when her eyes found his again, a softened smile playing at the corners of her lips. He felt the joy grow impossibly bigger as she watched him.

“You look so tired, Kakashi, didn’t anyone take care of you?”

Tsunade snorted. “I think anyone who tried to take care of him would have ended up impaled.”

“Yeah,” Ino added, with her familiar shrewd grin. “Though I suppose we all know why now. Who wouldn’t have stuck around with that kind of _thank you_ in store—”

“Ino,” Sakura groaned, rolling her eyes as her face flushed. Kakashi couldn’t find it in himself to be embarrassed. All he knew was that the new color in Sakura’s cheeks was the color of life, the color of something precious.

Shizune glanced at him and seemed to catch onto the fact that they had interrupted a private moment sooner than the others did.

“Okay, we’ve harassed Sakura enough. Lady Tsunade, give her an assessment and then leave her here in peace.”

“What, so they can start humping on the gurney again—”

“ _Shishou!”_

“All right, all right, keep your panties on, Sakura,” Tsunade snapped, her hands lighting up green. “And I mean it because you have a lot of internal bleeding that we’ve been patching up so any jostling around—”

“ _Shishou!”_

“Fine!”

Tsunade finished her assessment, grumbling about delayed rebellion well into adulthood and whether or not they needed to start keeping condoms in the intensive care units while Sakura squawked in indignant protest. By the time the three women filtered out of the room, Sakura was bright red and glaring after them.

“Those nosy, gossiping, _exaggerating_ —”

“Sakura.”

“Kept me alive just to torture me—”

“Sakura.”

“As if I haven’t found all of them being indecent somewhere in the hospital—”

“ _Sakura_.”

She stopped and her eyes flicked to his and flooded with realization and warmth as a grin spread across her face. “Kakashi,” she replied.

He settled himself back into his chair, taking her hand in his and skimming his fingers up and down the calluses on her knuckles. When she had been unconscious, he had been afraid of even curling his fingers around hers because she had seemed so breakable. He had just held her hand flat between his. Now, even in her weakened state, she seemed to thrum with life and energy.

“I’ve been so afraid,” he finally managed.

For the first time since she had woken up a bit of sadness filtered into her gaze. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“When I got to Kusagakure and saw what you had done—”

“All I could think when I was doing it was how selfish I felt to be leaving you behind.”

He stared at her. He had lost many, many people in his life, and they all had died for causes they believed in. But none had come back to him and told him that in their final moments, their greatest fear had been leaving him behind. It was the first time someone had acknowledged that their sacrifice could be selfish, that it could hurt him. He took her hand and held it to his chest, unable to speak. She smiled at him.

“Did Kusagakure make it? Or did I put you through all this for nothing?”

He chuckled. “Not only did they make it, there were nearly no casualties after you arrived. When we took you far enough away your jutsu cut out, but you had kept them all alive for hours. It gave us time to get the relief teams there, but even then they just ended up tidying up the mess. You singlehandedly fended off an assault from Iwa playing both offense and defense.”

“Really,” she breathed.

He nodded. “If you were a legend before, you’ve become a super-legend now. Once you’re let out of here there are going to be tons of ceremonies to suffer through. You’ll have your pick of impressive titles. Ino tells me the most popular one right now in Kusagakure is the Tigress of the Leaf, though you’ll probably have to pick a new ANBU mask if you want to keep any level of anonymity. Your old one shattered halfway through your crusade, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the pieces end up in some museum dedicated to you.”

“Stop it,” she said, flushing red. “This can’t be real.”

He smiled. “Plenty of ninja could have gone there and beaten back the invaders. But very few could have done that while keeping the dying alive. If you hadn’t woken up and everyone went around talking about the ‘Tigress’ I think I would have ended up losing my mind.”

Her face crumpled a bit with concern and he immediately felt guilty. He hadn’t meant to be so open about his fears, but in the utter relief washing over him it was hard to censor his thoughts. He gripped her hand a little tighter. “But you made it,” he reminded her softly.

“I made it,” she agreed, reaching for his face with her free hand and sweeping her thumb over his cheekbone, pressing gently at the skin under his eyes where he knew there would be dark bags. It reminded him of their moment outside the bar, which somehow felt like it had happened entire lifetimes ago. Her hand against his face felt as right and as thrilling now as it did then.

He felt his mouth go dry as he debated asking his question, but he decided it was now or never. He had seen what it was like to live with his regrets for the last few days, and it was far more frightening than it would be to just be honest. He cleared his throat.

“Now that you’ve made it, what does this mean for us?”

Her hand paused in its sweep through his hair on the word _us_ and a small but cautious grin curled on her lips. “Well if I remember correctly, you said you might love me, but you wanted ‘time to figure it out.’ Is that still true?”

He squeezed her hand a little tighter, drawing some courage from its warmth. “I might be a little more certain about the first part now, but I still want time.”

Her face split open into a large smile, radiant and alive as he felt his heart beating quickly in his chest. He had been more open with his emotions in the last few days than he had during the rest of his life, and he kept waiting to feel himself begin to shut down. But he didn’t.

“Well that is very good,” she whispered. “Because I want more time, too.”

“I have terms, though.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Terms?”

“No more missions without me.”

She scowled. “I don’t need babysitting, Kakashi.”

“You don’t,” he agreed, “But I do. I’ve been very good about not lashing out the last few days but if this happens again, I can’t promise my good behavior. If you get hauled back here and dumped in a hospital bed, I also will need to be hauled back here and dumped in a hospital bed next to you because otherwise I will cause problems.”

Her eyes softened. “Okay, how about this. Any big, dangerous, or life-threatening missions I go on, you can go on.”

He scowled at her. “This was not supposed to be a life-threatening mission, Sakura, and yet—”

“Okay, okay, we can be partners in a very literal sense of the word. We can go around glued at the hip in case one of us gets called on a surprise mission, but I’m telling you that this will only last for a few weeks before you get sick of me being there 24/7.

He gripped her hand tightly, pressing it hard against his chest, thinking about the hellish three days he had spent trying to imagine what his life would be like without her in it. “I will _never_ be sick of you being with me.”

She stared at him, her mouth open in surprise. “This was very hard for you, wasn’t it,” she finally whispered.

He barked out a sharp laugh. “Very hard,” he agreed.

“Well,” she said, small sparks of mischief in her eyes. “I can think of something that might make it easier now that you aren’t in your mask.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I think we were told very explicitly that there was to be no jostling.”

She grinned, her hands fisting in the front of his shirt and pulling him nearer. “No jostling,” she agreed. “But I think just for now, this is fine,” she murmured, pressing her lips against his.

* * *

“Sakura-chan, granny got a message to us and we came as soon as we could—WHAT IS GOING ON HERE—”

“NARUTO! GET OUT!”

“But what is he—”

“OUT!”

“But—”

“OUT!”

“…”

“You too, Sasuke! OUT!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hallo I am so sorry for the... four month??? delay in this? Oof, I honestly have no excuse. I considered dragging out the waiting but in the end I decided everyone had waited long enough for Sakura to wake up. This isn't the last chapter-- I have another planned with Naruto and Sasuke's return, but after that we will be at the finish line! Though I might update periodically with some random moments / snippets of their lives as the inspiration strikes. 
> 
> Thank you for coming with me on this journey of getting back into writing!! I have not been the most consistent updater, so in the future I think I'll try to write larger chunks of the story before posting. I think after this I might play around with an Akatsuki Sakura AU, but we shall see lol. 
> 
> Thank you again for reading if you're still here!


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